Dancing in Xi’an

I’ve never taken classes Spring or Summer term in Provo, but in China, 7 credits is intense. We start every day with improvisation, and the Chinese dance faculty takes the class with us. It’s kind of a strange class—moving from your feelings, being abstract, doing things you’ve never done before. It is really interesting to see the Chinese teachers move. They have such a different sense of time, space, and energy than we Westerners do. For the most part, they got the hang of it really well and some of the improvisations were really nice.

Then we have a lecture class, taught by our own professor, and soon each of us will be giving reports on different aspects of Chinese culture.

After lunch we have composition, which the Chinese come to as well. They don’t participate as much, but they watch and observe. In all our classes, there are a slew of Chinese students just sitting along the edges watching. It’s a nice gesture of them to come and watch, but I feel like they must have better things to do! This group of cheerleaders saw us walking past their room and hollered for us to come watch them perform.

The next class is the wild card. Mostly we’ve been doing various forms of martial arts, taught to us by local teachers. We did Long Fist, Tai-Chi, Five Animals, and Mixed Martial Arts. One of our favorites was Five Animals. Originally, this form was a Taoist practice to cultivate and purify the body. For example, the fingers relate with the kidneys, so using the fingers brings health to your kidneys. The Five Animal practice uses beliefs like this to bring health to the body. Nowadays, this form is mostly for keeping aging bodies from becoming immobile and decrepit. There are sets of movements associated with each of the 5 animals: tiger, bear, monkey, deer, and bird. One of our favorites was the deer, because of the hand gesture.



We also learned a Chinese folk dance, called the Ansai Drum dance. The school gave us our own drums (and awesome gold Aladin pants) as gifts. The dance originated from farmers working in the fields, celebrating life, and worshiping the Yellow River. We tried to capture that spirit, but the Chinese did it so much better. I realize how much culture America lacks being in China.