French composer Laurent Petitgirard conducts the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra Budapest during the recording of the symphonic piece Journey to the West in the Hungarian capital in 2021. CHINA DAILY

　　French composer completes 53-year quest to create a musical dance drama of classic Chinese novel, Chen Nan reports.

　　In 1966, for his 16th birthday, French composer Laurent Petitgirard's elder brother gave him a copy of the classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West. Petitgirard was fascinated. He read the novel over and over again, sparking the idea of putting it into music, a quest that took him 53 years to embark upon.

　　"No doubt because I had to complete my journey as a composer before venturing into creating the music to accompany the odyssey of the monk, Xuanzang," says Petitgirard, 73, who was born in Paris, and studied piano and composition as a child.

　　Journey to the West, by Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) writer Wu Cheng'en, follows the adventures of the aforementioned Tang Dynasty (618-907) monk and his three disciples — the animal spirits Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing — on their journey to obtain Buddhist scriptures.

　　In early 2019, after he met Chinese dancer-choreographer Wang Yabin in Paris, Petitgirard decided to wait no longer and started to compose.

　　International collaborations have been a driving force in the Yabin and Her Friends project, which Wang initiated in 2009.For example, she collaborated with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui from Belgium on Genesis in 2013; and with choreographer Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on Dream in Three Episodes.

　　Petitgirard watched Wang's Genesis on television and, after watching Wang's choreographic work, Swan — A Different Story, in Lucerne, Switzerland, he says: "It was for me the confirmation that Yabin is a major choreographer and a first-class artist."