A video has been circulated on the Internet in which, judging by the caption, a grandmother and her grandson performed acrobatic ballet at a Chinese talent show. We have checked this story for accuracy.
The 2.5-minute video features a Chinese couple performing in front of a jury in front of a huge image of the moon to the song "Never Enough" from the movie "The Greatest Showman." About halfway through the video, the dancer begins performing ballet elements while standing on her partner's shoulder and head.
The video appeared back in 2019. On social networks sometimes he sign as follows: “Magic video! This dancer was born in 1945. At the time of the dance she was 74 years old. The dance took place in Hong Kong in 2019. The partner is her grandson, her daughter’s son.” But it happens that another age is indicated: for example, 73 years old, 75 or 76 years old. You can also find the estimated age of the grandson: he allegedly was only 20 years old. In addition, the video use V motivational posts about rejuvenation of the body. A video about a grandmother and grandson dancing appears in "VKontakte", "Odnoklassniki", Facebook*, and also on YouTube and sometimes gets tens of thousands of views.
How reports fact-checker AFP, this video with a similar caption about a 74-year-old woman and her young grandson, but in Chinese, has been circulating on Facebook* since at least the end of July 2019. It lit up and on Twitter: in his post, the user wrote that the old lady was supposedly a Shanghai ballerina born in 1945.
In the upper left corner of the original video there is logo Chinese TV channel Hunan TV. In the upper right corner is logo Chinese video platform Xigua Video, and in the lower right - the name of the program "World's Got Talent" written in simplified Chinese and English. At the very beginning of the recording, another inscription appears for a couple of seconds in the lower left corner, where the names of the speakers are indicated in simplified Chinese: Wu Zhengdan (Wu Zhendan) and Wei Baohua (Wei Baohua).
On the Chinese microblogging service Weibo There is verified account Wu Zhendan. Her page is called “Shoulder Ballet - Wu Zhendan”. The profile description states that she is the founder of shoulder ballet and vice-chairman of the Chinese Acrobatics Association. The year of birth is also indicated - January 7, 1981, that is, the ballerina is now 41 years old.
And an extended version of the dance, called “Moon Love,” can also be found on one of Hunan TV’s Weibo accounts. There's a video there published back on April 19, 2019, it lasts just over nine minutes, and the ballet performance begins at the 5:45 mark. Hong Kong branch of AFP reported, that at the 3:49 mark the jury introduced the pair of dancers as husband and wife. Below is a version of the video from the Got Talent Global YouTube channel:
Russian media about the prima ballerina of the troupe from Guangzhou Wu Zhendan and her husband Wei Baohua wrote more than ten years ago. The couple has been performing together for more than 20 years and have toured Europe and Russia, performing the main roles in an acrobatic version of the ballet Swan Lake by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Image: Video screenshot. Source
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