Ni hao!

Ni hao! My name is Yuan Jia. I am sixteen years old. I was born in the Hunan province of mainland China. Currently I am a student at the Guangdong Dance Academy in Guangzhou, a professional academy for children who want to become dancers. All of the students, teachers, and administrator's live at the school together. There are three main departments in the academy: ballet, Chinese classical dance, and Chinese folk dance. The academy has also just started a choreography department for college-level students. I study in the Chinese classical dance department. This is my third year at the academy.

I knew I wanted to dance when I was nine years old. I used to watch Chinese folk dance performances on television. Chinese television often airs dance programs, especially around Chinese New Year. I can remember the dancers I saw on television very clearly: they were very strong and could do amazing jumps and flips. I knew it was something that I wanted to try.

I saw an advertisement in the newspaper about the Children's Art Company in the Hunan province. The Art Company is like a community center where children can study many different art forms, including dance, music, drama, and painting. I asked my mother if I could go to the audition, and she agreed. At the audition, the teachers asked me to join the children's dance program. I was very happy to have the opportunity.

I have a twin sister named Yuan Yuan. She is older than I am, but only by two minutes! She studies Chinese calligraphy at the Children's Art Company. Her writing is very beautiful and she has her own style.

One day my teacher announced that his professional dance company was going to have an audition for children. He works for the Hunan Province Song and Dance Company. Most cities in China have their own song and dance companies, but there are only five cities with professional academies: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Shenyang, and Sichuan. Sometimes, if a city has a song and dance company but no professional dance academy, one of the other cities will agree to train dancers for that company. So the dance academy in Guangdong province agreed to train one class of boys and two classes of girls for the Hunan Song and Dance Company.

More than three hundred children attended the audition. First, the teachers measured our arms and legs. Then they checked the flexibility of our bodies. Afterwards, they played a rhythm for us on the piano and we had to clap the rhythm back. That part was easy.

For the final audition, everyone had to perform a solo which we had prepared ahead of time. My dance teacher in Hunan choreographed a solo for me. I wasn't very nervous during the audition. Somehow I had a feeling that I would be successful. I think that if you believe you can do something, then you can do it.

Out of all of the children, they only chose fourteen boys and seventeen girls. Many of my friends from the Children's Art Company also attended the audition and most of us were selected to join the Guangdong Dance Academy. We were really happy, and so was our teacher.

Life at the academy is very busy. We wake up at 6:30 in the morning and go to the studio for morning practice. We use this time to warm up our muscles and stretch. Sometimes my friends and I go over some of the combinations which the teachers will expect us to know during class later in the morning. The teachers are not required to attend this practice, but our teacher usually comes to help us. He really cares about us and wants us to succeed. His name is Tan Wei, and he is part of the young generation of teachers at the academy. He used to be a professional dancer in the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, but then he decided to become a teacher.

The Guangdong Modern Dance Company is very famous in China because it is the first official professional modern dance company in our country. Yang Mei Qui is one of the founders. She used to be the principal of the school before she started the company. The dancers in the Guangdong Modern Dance Company live in another building near the studios where we practice. They have their own studio with a special floor. Sometimes the company has performances in the small theater next to our school, and sometimes they even have performances outdoors. One time they performed a dance on a basketball court. One of the female dancers was the basketball and they actually put in her in the basket! I don't always understand their dances, but I like to watch them anyway. Their performances are very creative.

Back to our daily schedule. Morning practice ends at about 7:15. We go back to our dormitories and wash up. Then I go to the canteen to buy my breakfast. I eat the some breakfast every day: soft wide noodles, one egg, and Chinese dumplings. The dumplings are like small, round rolls, except that inside they have special fillings, like sweet red beans or vegetables. My friends and I usually bring our breakfast back to our room to eat.

After breakfast we have our first class, which starts exactly at 8:00. Each day the schedule changes a bit. Usually we have two dance classes in the mornings and academic classes in the afternoons. Every day we have Chinese classical dance. This is a system which some teachers at the Beijing Dance Academy created by combining pads of Russian ballet with Chinese kung fu and Beijing Opera movements. The class starts on the floor. Then we do a barre with exercises like plies, tendus, and battements. The legwork comes from ballet, but the arm positions are very different from classical ballet. After the barre we do center work and combinations across the floor. My favorite part is the jumping. Our second class of the day is either Chinese folk dance or acrobatics. There are fifty-six different ethnic groups in China, and each has its own style of folk dance. Chinese dance experts travel to all parts of China, especially areas in the countryside, to learn these folk dances. Each folk dance has its own special costumes, props, rhythm, and feeling.

In the afternoons, we study academic subjects like Chinese, mathematics, politics, citizenship, history, and English, but we have a big break between the morning and the afternoon sessions. We have three hours for lunch so that we have time to properly digest our food and take a nap before returning to class. The official school day ends at 6:00. Then we have one hour for dinner. At 7:00, we go back to the studios for two hours of evening practice on our own. Afterwards we have time to take a shower, wash our clothes, read, study, or just talk with friends. By 10:00, we go to sleep so that we have enough energy to get up the next day and start all over!

Our one day off is Sunday. Sunday is free time to play, study, or just relax. On Saturday night, some of the students get together and have singing contests with the karaoke machine in the student lounge or watch films on television. The schedule at the Guangdong academy keeps us busy, but I think that if you really want to be something special in life, you have to be disciplined about what you do. I love dance and I want to be very famous someday, so I enjoy working hard at the academy.