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Confucius Institute
VOLUME 15 | NO.4 JUL. 2011
I
magine taking a dance class from a Chinese
teacher who speaks no English. No problem,
right? Dance majors from Dancing Depart-
ment of University of Buffalo and I not only
experienced it personally but also shared its
joys in this class together.
To achieve perfect performance at the grand
opening of the new campus Confucius Center, the
university has invited Lady He Xingqiong, a danc-
ing artist of the Chengdu Musical eater of China,
to teach us Chinese folk dance. And this was the
first time for us to have access to Chinese dance.
At the first rehearsal, the cast members of the
dance troupe shared glances and words of excite-
ment. We couldn’t wait to meet this choreographer
from China whose resume we had studied on our
computer screens and whose full name we couldn’t
pronounce.
Our first impression of Ms. He was that she
was a tiny lady who could speak a mile a minute
in a tongue we couldn’t understand and twist her
body in ways we didn’t think possible. During our
first meeting, we watched videos of the dances we
would be learning, with a mixture of excitement
and intimidation. The dancers moved precisely
and clearly, and in one of the pieces, extremely fast.
How were we American-trained dancers, with very
different technical and cultural backgrounds, going
to be able to embrace and perform the foreign ver-
nacular movements convincingly?
And so we began with basics and learned to walk
in “Chinese. Ms. He had very high expectations for
us and challenged us in every rehearsal. The cho-
reography was intricate, with detailed attention to
shoulder, hand, and finger placement and pointed
and flexed feet. At times Ms. He would become up-
set when we did not understand or execute a move-
ment correctly. Although Ms. He did not speak
much English, she could certainly say “no” and
“wrong” in English whenever a mistake was made in
our movements.
Ms. He’s ability to contextualize other tradi-
tional Eastern movements in familiar ballet terms
was very helpful for our Western brains and
bodies. She would raise rounded arms
above her head in fifth position and
say, “Ballet.” en she would flip her
palms upward, bend her elbows, and
say, “Chinese.” Her pointed, turned-out
foot would shift into a flexed, parallel po-
sition, and so on. And these are basic move-
ments for feet in Chinese folk dance.
Ms. He’s vivid, theatrical explanations of
the themes and characters of each dance helped
us connect with each role to draw out the right
performance quality. In the dance
Come Catch Me
Brother
, we took on roles of flirting young men and
women in the countryside. Ms. He dramatically
demonstrated the roles: dainty, high-pitched girls
and deep-voiced, grounded, mischievous boys. She
eased us into character through laughter and then
said, “Go.” e seemingly impossible phrasing and
clarity of movement came with better understand-
ing of characters and lots of practice.
Our technical advancement improved exponen-
tially and surprisingly quickly as we developed a
bond with our choreographer. Within only a few
weeks, we could understand Ms. He’s pidgin mix-
ture of Mandarin, broken English, and gestures and
facial expressions even before our translators reiter-
ated it. And Ms. He began to know better each one
of us and every rehearsal became so happy and gay
for us all. It was amazingly wonderful that we could
understand each other without the help of language.
On the day of the performance we were thrilled
to don our beautiful custom-made costumes and
share what we had worked so hard to learn with
dignitaries from the University at Buffalo, the
City of Buffalo, and Capital Normal University in
Beijing. During tech rehearsals, guest artists and
performing-arts students from Capital Normal
University joined us. As we warmed up together,
they helped us refine our Mongolian dance.
Our performance achieved great success and
gained high praise from all honored guests present.
After the performance, Ms. He gave each of us a
piece of paper with “Practice makes perfect” written
on it in Mandarin and English. I have been getting
inspiration from these four characters ever since and
have learned how to embrace cultural differences
through the commonalities of art form. I hope that
one day I can see Ms. He again in China.
VIEWS OF CHINA
ᠡᏥ࣎ˁݝ
ᄊ学ၷ̓Ǎ
Ms. He
Xingqiong (in
the center) with
her students