On the 4th of August to the 8th of August Canberra Dance Development Centre (CDDC) experienced our first dance study tour with international dance students.

It was an extremely successful business adventure and cultural exchange not only for CDDC but also for the China Welfare Institute Children’s Palace who were the participants of five day dance study tour at CDDC.

The student’s ages ranged from 8 to 12 years old and they spent 3 hours dancing at CDDC every morning from 9:00 – 12:00 where we taught them a dance work based on Australian dance with a bush theme including animals such as the Kangaroo, Frill necked lizard, Emus, Brolgas and the Wattle flower.

They wanted to experience and learn western dance we included this theme through contemporary choreography in a 20 minute work for them to take back to China and include in their performance repertoire.

We had two teachers stay with us throughout the lessons to help as interpreters, they had very little English and we had very little Chinese, nevertheless we communicated exceptionally well through dance and the children mimicked and soon learnt our English translation of the dance moves we were teaching and we tried to pick up a little bit of Chinese!

On the Saturday a dance exchange performance was organised - CDDC’s Junior and Senior Performance Groups and the China Welfare Institute Children’s Palace performed in a joint studio performance in front of an audience.

A great memory for all of the students who participated in this wonderful dance and cultural exchange.