the universal language of dance

Teaching dance here in China has its own unique set of challenges. For instance, when teaching ballet not only do I have to teach in Chinese, but I have to teach the steps that are in French in Chinese! How does that work? I don't know. When I learned them they were in French so I want to teach them that way as well! So what happens when you have a student who doesn't speak Chinese, English, or French?!! That's what happened last night. I have a Japanese student who came for the second time last night, but it turned out she was the only student for the class so basically I taught her a private lesson. The lesson was our "Fusion" style which is a kind of dance that mixes a western style with a Chinese minority style. It's a pretty special class, and I was continuing a Dai Minority/Jazz dance that I started last week. It was so interesting to me how I was able to communicate with this student through movement and repetition without really talking to her at all. She can count in Chinese so that's pretty much how we did the steps the entire class... yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba Zai lai! (again) yi, er, san, si, wu, liu......
She is a really sweet girl, and I hope that I will be able to communicate with her more in the future. She's here studying Chinese so once she learns a little more of pu tong hua we should be able to talk just fine. But for now, we rely on the universal language of dance... the body moving to the music. Everyone can understand this.