The professional dancer Yang Liping is a star in China. She has created new interpretations of the folk dances from the Yunnan region and combined elements of these with contemporary dance forms. Yang herself belongs to the Bai-people ethnic minority, and comes from Dali where she commissioned a new performing arts centre just to the northeast of the historic old town.  Situated between the Cang mountain chain which reaches 4,000 meters in height, and the 40 kilometres wide Lake Erhai, the city of Dali is an important tourism destination. The old town has largely preserved and still has some remains of the historic city wall with gate towers. Recent economic and urban development have concentrated in Xiaguan at the southern of the lake, while cultural programmes have been developed in Dali; with parallel improvements in traditional heritage buildings such as the pagodas and temples, and in new facilities including the Performing Arts Centre and the Museum of Contemprorary Art, both designed by Zhu Pei.

Inspired by the powerful surrounding landscape, Zhu Pei searched for landscape related references to solve the architectonic challenges for the Performing Arts Centre. A widely cantilevered rectangular roof spans across a built landscape of free-flowing indoor and outdoor spaces, some of which can be combined as an interacting spatial system. As with mountains and valleys, the strong shape of the roof reflects the more organic landscape below and points to the old Chinese principle of yin and yang, where two opposites form a whole together. Formally expressed as organic=shaped hills, the partly sunken spaces become like a natural garden landscape, promising a high experiential quality, which continues into the public theatre inside.