Dancing is the spice of life
By Aurora Caskey
Photos by Yao Fan courtesy of Wenny
温妮国际舞蹈中心重新开张了。在这里，来自印尼的温妮和她热情专业的舞蹈老师们会带领你一起去领略极富动感的爵士舞，热情奔放的拉丁舞，神秘性感的肚皮舞，温婉优雅的芭蕾舞，域外风情的夏威夷舞等。在这个舞蹈中心，你不仅可以身随舞动，还可以交朋友，学英语呢。
The re-opening of Wenny’s International Dance Studio is bringing dance from around the world back to Xiamen. Its owner Wenny is an Indonesian-Italian originally from Jarkarta.

Dance in her blood
At first glance Wenny looks like any other Xiamen resident. But close observation reveals her more exotic features. From her white boots to the charm dangling from her fingernail, you can tell she is a stylish and cosmopolitan woman.
The one thing Wenny still struggles with is that she cannot read or write Chinese. However, she is fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin and speaks a little Italian. She says, “My Chinese is not good,” but she seems to be able to communicate very eloquently.
Wenny began dancing at age 6 with ballet. But she soon grew bored with it because she found it too slow. When asked why she gave it up for good, she says: “Because I fell in love with jazz. Jazz is more colorful. Jazz is a fusion of modern dance and ballet.” She says that the dancer she is most inspired by is a friend of hers from Indonesia.

Here to stay
Wenny graduated from a dancing school in Italy and has been living in Xiamen for the past 3 years. But she says she still goes back to Jarkarta often to visit her family. When asked what she misses most about home, she says simply "the food"! She’s especially fond of spicy food which she cannot find a lot of in Xiamen. Wenny also lived in Italy for about three years to study dance.
She has found herself always on the move. However, she says she plans on staying here for at least 3 more years. And with the re-opening of her dance studio, she has a lot of reasons to stay.
Wenny says that when she closed her original studio one and a half years ago it was very difficult for her. “I cried for three days. It was hard for me because I have a special relationship with my students. I think of them more as friends. There is no distance between us,” she says.
She is so close to her students that when she’s in Xiamen old students come to her house morning, noon, and night begging her to teach them. While this would probably exasperate most people, Wenny says it with a smile on her face and seems more flattered than anything.

A new beginning
The dance studio just re-opened last Monday but Wenny says they already have over 30 students, and more are coming every day. There are classes every night of the week, usually more than one. As the name suggests, the studio has a wide variety of classes from all over the world. It offers jazz, modern, hip hop, salsa, belly dancing, Latin and yoga at the moment but eventually Wenny plans to expand the range to include ballet, discorobic, Indian, Hawaiian, Afro and swing. There are four other teachers besides Wenny, a man from Columbia who teaches salsa, a hip-hop teacher from the US and two women from the southwest of China.
Wenny says that her classes are “for everyone and you don’t need experience.” Her students range in ago from 15 to 50 but most students are in their 20s and 30s. And while most of her students are female, she seems eager to have more men join her classes. “We only have 3 or 4 men in our classes now, and some go to belly-dancing,” she says, laughing.
Furthermore, there is an English language class every Saturday afternoon at Wenny’s studio for Chinese students.

Dance in action
Curious about what Wenny’s classes were like, I decided to experience one for myself. I decided on going to Thursday night salsa.
The studio itself is located in an out-of-the-way building. The walls of the one room studio are lined with pictures of Wenny in various dance poses. There’s also a section devoted to various amusing pictures her students have contributed. Looking at the pictures you can see how Wenny has influences and friends from all around the world.
As more and more people arrived to the studio, they laughed and talked like old friends. Wenny hugged people as they came in and seemed genuinely excited to see everyone.
Suddenly the Latin tempo chimed in and it was time for class to begin. The 10 students lined up in front of the teacher, poised and ready. Even though Wenny was not teaching this class, she stayed in the studio, helping people with their moves and just hanging around.
When asked what her favorite place in Xiamen was, Wenny laughed and said: “My studio.” It is her lifelong devotion to dance that makes Wenny’s International Dance Studio really something special.

Wenny’s International
Dance Studio
温妮国际舞蹈中心yself. I decdJF
Address: Room 705， South Building， Xingang Guangchang， Hubin Bei Rd
地址：厦门市湖滨北路新港广场南楼705室
Tel: 0592－5203667 8370775
Fax: 5203657
Email:wenny.chan@hotmail.com

Vocabulary
exotic 域外风情的
dangling 悬挂着
eloquently 善辩地
fusion 融合
exasperate 使厌烦
tempo 拍子
discorobic 有氧健美操
poised 泰然自若的