Five Duke dance students spent this past summer in China, introducing into the country a new concept: summer dance camp. Their trip is the latest episode in a remarkable history of engagement between dancers from Duke and China. It’s a story that says a great deal about the passion, commitment, and entrepreneurial spirit of Duke’s dance community.
The incubator is the DukeEngage program in Zhuhai and its guiding spirit, Hsiao-mei Ku. For the past four years, she has shepherded groups of students to Zhuhai’s No. 9 Middle School to teach English and arts classes. Since she is a violinist (a member of Duke’s Ciompi Quartet, in fact), she describes the endeavor in musical terms.
During the summer months, I lead 12 Duke students to carry out Duke University’s DukeEngage “Empowerment Through Arts” program in Zhuhai, China. There Duke students have created beautiful melodies for the symphony. By teaching 16 integrative arts classes at Zhuhai No.9 Middle School, Duke participants encourage young Chinese students to pursue their dreams, try out novel art forms and motivate them to create endless possibilities. To support the upper voices with vigorous rhythmic energy, Duke students fill rich harmonies underneath every possible moment. … [T]hey play games and sing along with adorable children at the orphanage, and exchange ideas with Chinese university students or share their experiences with high school international track students who chase their dreams by applying to American universities; they dance and sing, sharing a fun experience with their No.9 students during the final show on stage, and then the next minute are squeezed into all kinds of shapes, becoming drops in the vast human sea when No. 9 students flood the stage after the show; they all laugh first and then begin to sob and howl, tears and sweat zigzagging down their faces. Do you hear this human symphony now? Does this beautiful music resonate in your heart?
Zhuhai has provided a number of Duke students with a deep experience of China, of teaching, and of teaching the arts, and it seems that the dancers have been especially inspired. Luou Zhang is a case in point. His experience in Zhuhai in 2010 led him to organize a trip to the 2011 Summer Universiade in Shenzhen, China. The troupe he assembled ended up not only performing in the ceremony but taking their show on the road, at one point intersecting with Duke’s Basketball team, which was on a tour of its own.
That was the summer of Luou’s senior year. Although he’s Chinese-American, he’d spent little time in China and only spoke the language a little. When he came to Duke he expected to graduate and work in Boston or New York, but his China experience changed everything. He took a job with Bain Consulting in Hong Kong, thinking that would be an ideal bridge. After a year, he left the consulting business to join a non-profit called IDEAS, which is seeking to reform Chinese education.
Luou recently returned to Zhuhai to be present at the graduation of one of the students he’d taught there. He wrote us to describe the experience:
I first met Joanna in the second floor hallway of Zhuhai No.9 Middle School (affectionately known as “九 中” amongst the locals) during the second week of our DukeEngage Zhuhai program in 2010. She would run up to me with a beaming smile and muster all the courage her English class gave her to say “Hello, my name is Joanna, would you like to make a friend with me?” Three years ago, Joanna’s head barely went up to my chin, and her hair was near tomboy-length as the middle school forbidden the girls from having long hair for fear of being a “distraction” to their academic lives. From that afternoon on, she would often visit me in the office the school set up for the DukeEngage students. On some days, she would practice her new found English vocabulary on me; on other days, she would bring her classmates and ask me to share about the mysterious world of America, college, and dating. In return, they ushered me into the world of Zhuhai student, one that is filled with buddle tea, endless test-prep, and Happy Summer Camp (one of their favorite TV shows).
Joanna is excited to go to college and study to be an English translator so she can, as she told Luou, “meet all sorts of people and travel around the world through their stories.” Read the rest of Luou’s letter.
One of Luou’s first ideas for IDEAS was to bring back the Duke dancers. He floated the idea in a conversation with Junior Rebecca Pham this past December. As their conversation developed, he followed up with a visit to campus in February to enlist the help of Vice Provost for the Arts Scott Lindroth. And so it happened that a group of 5 joined him this past summer to lead summer dance camps for Chinese high school students.
It is explicitly NOT a camp for aspiring dancers. The idea behind it is to broaden the students and unlock their creativity and to show them alternative ways to learn, grow, and prosper outside the confines of the Chinese education system. Rebecca recorded some of her thoughts about all this as she was preparing to leave Durham for Beijing.
I truly can’t wait to explore all that China has to offer, especially to bond with those who we will be teaching. I feel that even though we are the ones teaching the program, we may leave learning more than those who we have taught. What I will have learned, I truly do not know at this moment in time, but I anticipate something great, just as great as the amazing trip I am to depart for in exactly 38 days.
In working with the beautiful children of Bull City Fit, I feel that I have gained a lot of knowledge about mental, physical, and emotional issues with which youth struggle. These issues are universal and should be addressed in the education systems of any culture. Unfortunately, very few curriculums take the time to emphasize nutrition, activity, creativity, and holistic living. This is what I hope to bring to China. I want the kids to get excited about learning to love themselves, about embracing the ability to be selfish in a good way by learning to put your health first. By making these thought processes a vital part of daily living, we can cultivate not only health and happiness but also boundless exploration without limits or walls.
Here is a brief introduction to the five members of the IDEAS team. Read more about them and their trip on their blog, Growth Through Dance.