In this Aug. 29, 2009 file photo, young dancers take ballet lessons at the National Ballet of China studio in Beijing, China. For Chinese, ballet is tangled up with China's blood-soaked revolutionary past, arriving here in the 1950s on a wave of pro-Soviet fervor and quickly repurposed as a propaganda weapon during the Cultural Revolution. Turning 50 this year, the company's tumultuous history helps reveal just how far the National Ballet of China has come, showing its range with a slew of imported and original performances along with old favorites. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel)

Turning 50 this year, the National Ballet of China is showing its range with a slew of imported and original performances such as "Swan Lake" and "Raise the Red Lantern," but what audiences crave are the ballets born during the company's heady first decade, when in the name of revolution, ballerinas with rifles pirouetted across dirt stages.

Signature works such as "The Red Detachment of Women" — a rousing story about a peasant girl liberated by communism and her heroic turn in an all-female army troupe — satisfy a taste for nostalgia among China's older audiences and are kitschy fun for younger crowds.

"When we put on 'Red Detachment,' it's always a full house; audiences love it and ... we are sure to make a profit," says director Feng Ying backstage on the closing night of "Onegin," an imported ballet that has filled only two-thirds of the seats in the National Theater.

A new Hollywood movie, "Mao's Last Dancer," will likely stir up even greater interest in China's so-called "red ballets" and the dark historical period that produced them. Based on the memoir of Li Cunxin, who was recruited by the Beijing Dance Academy as an 11-year-old boy and endured years of political terror and strict ballet training before defecting to the United States in 1981 at age 20, the movie was screened at the Toronto Film Festival.

How to preserve the Mao-era gems and create a new repertoire of homegrown works that bear the stamp of China's 21st-century character — openness, growth and prosperity — is the challenge facing the country's top ballet company as it celebrates its first half century.

China churns out very capable and disciplined dancers, many of whom win prizes in international dance competitions and are recruited by ballet companies abroad, such as the Tan Yuanyuan, believed by many to be the best Chinese ballerina today. Tan has been the principal dancer for the San Francisco Ballet since 1997 and will this fall tour China with the SFB for the first time. Where China lags behind is in creating breakthrough opportunities for their dancers at home.

"Creatively speaking, they have done far from enough. Fifty years and all you have to show for it is 'Red Detachment' and 'Raise the Red Lantern?'" said Beijing dance critic Ou Jianping. "No, they really need to have a major breakthrough, to innovate and try harder."

"Raise the Red Lantern," which premiered in 2001, is a sumptuous ballet set in feudal times with stunning sets and costumes but its choreography has gotten mixed reviews.

Ou's frustration is widely echoed by dancers, fans and visiting teachers, who all wonder about China's lack of talented choreographers.

Yi Ling, a former ballerina with the National who spent nearly 15 years dancing in the United States, blames the rigid discipline of the Beijing Dance Academy, which has churned out generations of dancers who take gold and silver medals at international ballet competitions but don't create their own works.

"Creativity is choked by all the rules and the discipline. We have the same problem with the Chinese educational system in general because it's very geared toward memorizing and imitating," said Yi, who three years ago started a small dance company in the eastern city of Suzhou. In December, she hopes to stage China's first rock ballet using music by Cui Jian, a gravelly voiced singer described by many as China's Bob Dylan.

Those kind of experiments are a bigger gamble for a large and historic company such as the National Ballet of China.

But Shirley Young, chair of the Committee of 100 US-China Cultural Institute, insists the National is actually a surprisingly progressive company.

"It's not like a lethargic state-owned company or something like that," Young said. "They have really been in the lead ... in promoting Western ballet, training young dancers, developing the art form, bringing in international people to help them raise their standard, collaborating with outside choreographers, traveling overseas. They are very much pushing forward."

Young said that a glance back at the company's tumultuous history helps reveal just how far the National has evolved.

Ballet was little known outside of expatriate enclaves before the government set up the first ballet academy in 1954 with help from Soviet allies and it was not an instant hit with Chinese audiences. A 1960s rhyme mocked it as immoral and immodest: "Thighs bare all over the stage; workers, peasants and soldiers can't stand the outrage."

Chinese ballet had its first flowering during the Cultural Revolution, when it became a pet obsession for Chairman Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing. "Swan Lake," ''Giselle" and other classical ballets were banned but two new revolutionary ballets — "Red Detachment" and "The White Haired Girl" were ubiquitous. Ballerinas performed them on dirt stages in remote villages. Filmed performances reached an even wider audience.

For most Chinese, these were the first ballets they'd ever seen, and they planted the seeds of a ballet fever that hit China in the mid-1990s.

Jiang also forced dancers to spend hours every day on political study, reading the works of Mao, and made them do stints as soldiers and peasants. This period is evocatively portrayed in "Mao's Last Dancer" which shows how fear of persecution and the poverty of that time created disciplined, hardworking dancers with a fierce desire to learn.

Li describes Jiang, or "Madam Mao," as tiny but "extremely threatening," with "a high-pitched voice and oversized glasses."

"If you did not do what she said, you would probably disappear the next morning," said Li, now an investment manager in Sydney, Australia.

The film, starring UK-based Chinese dancer Cao Chi and movie star Joan Chen, is sure to spark new interest outside of China in this dark chapter but Li hopes viewers realize that his experience bears little resemblance to how mainland dancers live and work today.

"Chinese dancers now have the options to dance overseas, to tour ... . They have much better facilities, much better studios," said Li. "Ballet in general, just like China, has really progressed a lot."