Another day, she sat inside it and told me it was her car. Alternatively, it became a house, a bicycle, a doll, a monkey, and a flower. The physical setting and daily routine were, in many ways, idyllic. Unlike dancers and choreographers in large American cities who must juggle grant writing, teaching yoga, organizing cross-town rehearsals and class and other day jobs, the dancers in Guangzhou have everything they need in one place. The company is situated on the grounds of the Guangdong Dance Academy, a pre-professional boarding school for dancers as young as eleven years old.
Live musicians play for their classes, sometimes an entire quartet of traditional instruments.
The studios have wood floors and are designed with multiple windows and open doors. The music drifts to all corners of the community, even the construction sites in and around the school. Each day has its own score, a blending of pipa, metal hammers on metal pipes and bulldozers scooping mounds of rocky earth. The dancers, musicians, administrators and students all live and work within this enclosed community. Simple concrete buildings, two or three stories high, surround this courtyard.