Du Liniang, the protagonist of Tang Xuanzu’s Ming dynasty kunqu opera “The Peony Pavilion,” is the tragic figure behind Wang Yuanyuan’s ballet version.

Juliette Yuan, co-author with Wang of this contemporary retake, sees Du as a “simple, kind, extraordinarily beautiful young girl on the cusp of womanhood,” literally possessed by a dream of love for which she eventually dies. It is the archetypal story of female suffering.

Wang and Yuan made a gusty move transitioning Du, who in the Ming play is the cloistered 15-year-old daughter of a rich landed-gentry family, into a 30-something woman with plenty of experience, but suffering from terminal, existential loneliness. It is both an accession to and a counter attack on the infantilization of Asian female culture. “Our Du is trapped in a transitional period, hesitating,” Yuan explains, “caught between hope and despair.” Times have changed, Chinese women aren’t married off at 15 anymore, but the angst of life and love is as ever acute. “She wants to meet Mr. Right, but can’t,” Yuan says. “She doesn’t know who he is, doesn’t know what he looks like, doesn’t know how to find him. She has lost hope in love.” A bitter Valentine indeed. Yuan says the ballet won’t offer any answers to these echoing questions, rather the play “invites you to think about these issues with us.” Du, for centuries the paragon of female beauty, has become the avatar of uncertainty. Something both women and men can relate to.