China's Palace of Dance.

Near the world-famous Summer Palace in China's capital is the Beijing Dance Institute & Academy (Beijing Wudao Xueyuan), a world-class institution in its own right. Incredibly, this dance school, which claims to be the world's largest, receives almost no acclaim compared to the more famous Paris Opera and Bolshoi academies.

A tour through the spacious campus (which compares in size to the entire Lincoln Center complex in New York) reveals an entire dance community. There are buildings for academic studies for middle school through college levels. The dance building contains forty-three large studios, many of which are about 1,800 square feet, each with huge vertical windows, grand pianos and modern lighting. In the basement are an acrobatic training center and a workout room. Multistoried dormitories house the 1,052 full-time students, and apartment buildings hold most of the nearly 200 teachers, their families and other staff members. There are several theaters, a department of music education offering training in modern and traditional instruments, a health clinic, a library and a film/video, audio and archival center. Support services include a full-time staff that designs and repairs costumes and footwear and even manufactures its own pointe shoes. Most important, the academy produces an astonishing array of accomplished dancers.

It began as the Beijing Dancing School in 1953, when the four-year-old Chinese Communist government asked the Soviet Union for help in setting up a formal dance institution. That year, ballet mistress Elena Oleg Sandrovna began training Chinese in ballet pedagogy, and auditions were held in various cities to recruit talented students. In 1954, the school opened its doors in a village area of what is now Beijing's Chaoyang District, and 200 eager children began a regimen based on that of the Bolshoi Academy. According to Xu Ding Zhong, who was among the first group of pupils, Sandrovna did the work of teacher, director and administrator.

"She did everything," he explains. "She began work each morning at about 6:30 and finished after 9 at night. She had meetings with the teachers, taught us (students) every day, designed the school uniforms, practice clothing and shoes. She set curfew for us and would not allow us to ride bicycles or skate. She hung curtains, prepared the dance floors and studios." According to Xu, her labor of love went on for three and one-half years, during which time she also prepared the students for performances that were attended primarily by Chinese leaders such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, members of the Politburo and their foreign guests.

In 1960, when a rift developed between Beijing and Moscow, the Russians abruptly withdrew all their specialists. The Academy, like many Chinese institutions, was left on its own but continued well enough until the disastrous Cultural Revolution, also known as the "Decade of Chaos." During most of that time (1966-73) the Academy, along with all schools of formal higher learning, was closed.

"All the teachers were sent to Hebei Province, where the PLA (the People's Liberation Army) had set up a farm," Xu remembers. "It was the Wudao Xueyuan's own farm. We had to build our own buildings by hand. Most of the time we worked very, very hard farming rice. We had competitions to see which group could plant the best, grow the most. The army taught us. Sometimes we did dances, performances according to the [appropriate] political ideas at that time ... like those operas which Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's wife) approved."

When the school reopened, China was still closed to the West. It wasn't until a few years later that the Academy began regularly recruiting foreign dance specialists. Although its ballet pedagogy is still basically Vaganova, the influences of the French School, Royal Academy of Dancing (R.A.D.), and the Royal Danish Ballet have all had an impact on the Academy's training and repertoire. The professional curriculum offers majors in Chinese classical dance (gudian wu); Chinese folk dance (mian jian and minzu wu); ballet; modern dance (xiandai wu); choreography (bian dao); dance history and theory; social dance and music for society. All departments have an education (jiao yu) major as well.

Since 1980, the Academy has expanded its curriculum from that of a strictly professional training center to a more versatile institute. It began its BFA college program and now conducts research, develops choreography--especially in modern dance--and has foreign language studies. As better political relations developed with more countries, the Foreign Affairs Office extended its role. Each year the Academy houses about twenty foreign students while sending its own guest artists abroad to perform or teach. Now, instead of the state sponsoring all tuition, students are expected to pay half the costs. Scholarships are scarce. The Academy now earns substantial income as more affluent Beijing residents send their children to dance lessons. In 1989, the Academy received the largest government benefit of all artistic institutions--70 million yuan (almost $10 million) was invested for expanding and refurbishing the facilities at the present location.

In an advanced-level ballet class, Professor Xu Ding Zhong surveys his students. Four ballerinas take their places at center in preparation for the petite allegro combination. The pianist begins, but as one girl positions her arms, the teacher halts the music and stands before her, making slow, sensuous gestures with his arms and torso in an exaggerated imitation of his pupil. "Zhe shi Dai zu ... zhe shi Dai zu de," he says. The girl blushes and others giggle at his reference to a Chinese folk dance. Later he confides, "Yes, I do it [use humor] in ballet class because ballet technique is very, you know, difficult ... it cannot always be so serious."

He has been training ballet dancers at the Academy for more than three decades. If one wants to hear the history of ballet as it developed in the People's Republic of China, ask him: He was among the 1,000 children in Shanghai who auditioned for a place in the first class of the original dance school in mid-1954. Only ten were selected to go to Beijing.

"I did not think I was chosen. I went to the audition because my primary school teacher told me to. When I was later told I was selected, my parents and I felt it was a good opportunity."

During the last forty-five years, Professor Xu has been involved directly or indirectly with nearly every aspect of the development of ballet in his country. His career has taken him around the world as a guest teacher, competition judge and director/coach for Chinese dancers entering international competitions. Some of his students now have international careers. His obvious congeniality, language skills and informality have earned him praise and recognition, and he has been a favorite with foreign hosts, journalists and guests of the Academy. Having given up the directorship of the Academy that he held from 1987-1992, he now concentrates on training young ballet dancers, as well as those who will train the next generation--ballet teachers.

"Each year, we audition about 7,000 students around the country. In each place it takes about one week to look at the children; we check their musicality, their body structure and so on. Of those, about four to five hundred come to Beijing in the spring for the final auditions. Of those, thirty are chosen for ballet and thirty for Chinese dance: fifteen boys and fifteen girls of each group."

Promising dancers often advance to professional companies within China, such as the National Ballet of China [see review], but others are invited to join companies outside, explains Xu. "Qu Luu is now a principal dancer with New Zealand Royal Ballet; Han Yen is a soloist with Zurich Ballet; and Zhao Monghua is with the Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal. So many students everywhere ... ABT, Houston Ballet, some in Winnipeg, Tulsa, Seattle, many places."

Houston Ballet has two graduates of Beijing Dance Academy in its company: ballet master Li Anlin and principal dancer Yin Le. Li, a graduate of the academy's class of 1970, affirms that his alma mater is a worldclass dance training institution and that Ben Stevenson, Houston's artistic director, was one of the people who contributed greatly to the opening influences of dance pedagogy and choreography from outside China in the years immediately after the Cultural Revolution. Li further says that one unique feature of the Academy is that "teachers and students had a special relationship ... a closeness, like family. Although the teachers were serious, after class they looked after their students." This developed a bond of trust between faculty and students. He remembers Professor Xu as an especially kind teacher.

"I have taught many times in Japan and Hong Kong, New Zealand, Switzerland, Indonesia, Korea," Xu says. "We went to Manila, Hong Kong and to La Baule, France, for international dance student festivals. In 1984 I took students to Osaka, Japan, for its International Ballet Competition and also in the U.S.A. [Jackson, Mississippi] in 1994. Then in 1990, 1993 and 1997 I was a judge at the international Prix de Lausanne competitions in Switzerland.... Other places I have only visited.

"Being director of a school has, how do you say, too many headaches. I prefer (now) to do teaching. At that I feel I am my own boss ... a master."

Norbert M. DuBois is a photographer and journalist and a regular visitor to China. Special thanks to the translators who worked with him, especially Ning Zhang, editor in chief of Target Magazine in Beijing.