Teacher devotes 22 years to teaching hearing-impaired students the art of dance

Zhao Jing, a 44-year-old dance teacher, has been teaching students with hearing disabilities how to dance to the rhythm of a silent world and develop confidence over the course of 22 years.

Photo shows Zhao Jing (front) teaching her students to dance at the Taiyuan School for the Deaf in Taiyuan, north China’s Shanxi province. (Photo courtesy of Zhao Jing)

After Zhao became a teacher at the Taiyuan School for the Deaf in Taiyuan, north China’s Shanxi Province, the first thing she did was to learn sign language in order to communicate efficiently with her students. She also found that the most effective way to master sign language was to communicate with the students as much as she could. “The more I ‘talked’ to them, the faster I made progress in mastering sign language,” said Zhao.

After she had a good command of sign language, Zhao moved onto the next step of her teaching plan, which was to help the students learn to make rhythmic dance moves and perform proper facial expressions that matched the music perfectly.

“How to help the students understand the music that they were dancing to was the most difficult part I encountered during teaching,” Zhao expressed.

Zhao Jing’s students perform a dance routine during a national arts performance for disabled people. (Chinanews.com/Wu Junjie)

During a rehearsal, Zhao would like to invite the students to feel the vibrations on the floor and through musical instruments because these vibrations were sounds that could also be felt and they could produce a rhythm. When they watched dance videos, Zhao would interpret the music and the dance moves for her students, sometimes using exaggerated sign language and expressions to facilitate the students’ understanding of the music.

In 2003, Zhao started to take her students to take part in national dance competitions. The students won multiple awards because of their excellent performances, and they also gained more opportunities to see the outside world when they travelled around the country to take part in the competitions. “The most unforgettable experience for me was one that took place in 2008 when I took my students to take part in a sign language dance performance during the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games at the National Stadium in Beijing,” said Zhao.

Zhao Jing’s students perform a dance routine during a national arts performance for disabled people. (Chinanews.com/Wu Junjie)

Days ago, Zhao’s students performed a dance show during a national arts performance for disabled people. “It was a folk dance in Shanxi that showed local people’s longing for a bumper harvest and a family reunion,” said Zhao. They started to prepare for the event since last year and intensified rehearsals in July and August this year. “During the competition, they perfectly expressed the folk culture of Shanxi and conveyed the beauty of the dancing art,” Zhao recalled.

Zhao Jing (the one wearing glasses) and her students are in the middle of a rehearsal. (Photo courtesy of Zhao Jing)

Thanks to the efforts made by Zhao and her colleagues at the Taiyuan School for the Deaf, the students have embraced positive changes through the medium of dancing. Some of them who were previously timid have become cheerful and willing to communicate with others, while some students are becoming more confident and also willing to express themselves.