China's Palace of Dance - Beijing Dance Institute and Academy

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2000 by Norbert M. Dubois

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.