It's a hot summer in Beijing, but the dance room is even hotter.

Split jump, backward roll and lift. Sweat-soaked hairs are sticking to the young faces of a group of teenagers dancing to their utmost with bare feet on the wooden floor of a room in a dance school in Beijing's Changping District.

In late July, some 100 students and 16 teachers of different nationalities attended a six-day modern dance camp, which is part of the 12th Beijing Dance Festival. The two-week festival, initiated by BeijingDance/LDTX in 2008, attracts dancers from around the world to perform and study in China's capital every year.

A camp of diversity

"Teachers are generous," said student Estelle Brown, "They want to give us the most and we want to absorb that."

The 19-year-old Australian girl is a third-year student at the dance department in the prestigious Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in Perth, the country's fourth largest city. She joined the camp together with 13 of her classmates funded by the Australian government.

They are evenly distributed in eight groups, which are mainly composed of Chinese students. Each group is scheduled to meet one teacher in a one-and-a-half hour class, so that they are able to meet all 16 teachers in the four full days of courses.

"Obviously, when you are a dancer, you want to get as much experience and knowledge as you can," she said. "I think it's really important to learn different styles and ways of thinking to open up the way that we dance."

This year's teachers come from 12 countries, including China. Each bring their own dance styles nurtured by their past experiences and cultural traditions.

In the class, Albanian teacher Igli Mezini stresses the force of interaction between body and floor, Albert Tiong from Singapore shows the symmetry and stretching force of movement, and Tony Mills from Scotland integrates modern dance with hip-hop elements.

"The whole beautiful purpose of the camp is that the dancers get used to 16 different teachers with 16 different ideas," said Danish teacher Jens Bjerregaard, who is characterized by his unique "Scandinavian feel" in dance featuring simplicity and clarity.

"It's very short introductions, but it will help each dancer to understand where they are as dancers and what they want to do with their dance," he added.

"Even if the style is not quite what we could recognize to suit us, we could use that to think about how we would like to dance and how could we take that dance into our own practice," said Estelle Brown.

Communicate through dance

Bjerregaard taught the skills of partnering in duet in his class. When he asked students to pair up, Brown found herself meeting face-to-face with a Chinese girl.

With instructors speaking different languages, each class has an assistant to translate the teacher's words. But student pairs must find their own way to communicate when they do a duet.

"Luckily we are in the form of dance, and dance is a study that is movement based. So in the class, we can just move, use our hands and use our body. It's a beautiful thing to be able to share this form of dance and not need to rely on language," she said, smiling.

Following the teacher's instructions, Brown and her partner completed the movements smoothly after a few rounds of running, and the two girls gave each other a thumbs-up.

"A huge skill I learn here is communication. Communicate to work with different people," Brown said.

"Over the last few days in the workshop, there has been beautiful duets between an Australian boy and a Chinese girl, a Chinese boy and an American girl, and actually they speak the same language," said Bjerregaard.

Such "mute communication" continued and reached a climax on the fifth day when the group was required to choreograph with two teachers, a piece of dance, and perform on stage on the last day in the camp.

Surprisingly, for such a collective action that requires high levels of cooperation and coordination, the class did not need a translator any more during the rehearsal. Teachers and students simply used their gestures and voices to ensure everything went right.

"This art form, what we do with the whole festival, is that we speak a language that transcends culture and language. We're actually able to communicate with each other very fast through this language," said Bjerregaard.

Teaching and learning are reciprocal

For Brown's group, the subject of the last day performance is Zeus, the god of thunder in Greek mythology. Teacher Aviv Asulin from Israel and Albert Tiong from Singapore were with the group to guide them.

On one night, Asulin dreamt of the dance and told her partner Tiong to make the dream come true together next morning. But instead of teachers making the piece on their own, the students, who all have a dance background, contributed a lot.

"It's also the work of the students. They created themselves the movement that is related to Zeus, and then we saw it and we clung it and changed it," said Asulin.

Students danced to show their impressions of Zeus. Asulin and Tiong picked some of the students' movements, asked the group to learn these movements and put them in the dance piece.

"They created. We just brought the idea, what's going to happen, and the formation. I just teach and enjoy what they do," said Asulin. "They receive information, they take and they ask questions. They are really good."

Involved in the process of choreographing a dance piece, Estelle Brown realized how meaningful it is "to be creative and share dance practices."

Wearing blue raincoats and painting red streaks on their faces, Brown and other members of the group stepped onto the stage in the school's hall. Activated by the thunderous music, they danced with all heart and soul in a piece that reflects their own imagination and creativity.

The performance gained a big round of applause from their teachers and fellow students. "We definitely feel like we have danced to great satisfaction!" Brown said after the show.

Cultural exchanges beyond dance

As a newcomer to China, Brown had to learn many things from the very beginning. Except for finding ways to better communicate with Chinese students, she had to learn how to use chopsticks to eat Chinese food and how to use the most popular instant messaging tool WeChat.

"We come from Australia all the way here to participate. There is nothing more special to learn from another culture and be with different people," said Brown.

"I think intercultural aspect is important for the students. I think that's what they gain. They become friends with a lot of people. They talk on Facebook and WeChat after the event. It's really lovely," said Nanette Hassall, head of WAAPA's dance department.

The 72-year-old recipient of two Australian Dance Awards, for her Services to Dance Education in 2002 and for Lifetime Achievement in 2012, emphasized the importance of international performance and exchanges both as a performer and educator.

"When students come to a place, they actually understand that country in a different way," said Hassall. "They would form relationships and they sustain in the future the level of cultural experience, broaden their horizons and help them not to remain self-enclosed, but reach outward to the world, which is what I think they need."

Hassall came to Beijing for the first time in 1994 to attend a dance event and kept on visiting different parts of China over the last 25 years. Now she has led her students to participate in the dance camp in Beijing, which is one of 40 overseas programs that her department conducts.

In the following week, Brown and her Australian classmates will watch some of over 60 performances included in the Beijing Dance Festival, presented by overseas artists from 15 countries as well as domestic dancers.

For Brown, China is not the first overseas place she visited as a dancer, and will not be the last. But the experience in the Beijing Dance Festival will give her something that she will carry on throughout her dancing life.

"To understand what you are doing in your training and take away from what other people are doing, you need to step out of your bubble, so I thank them for this opportunity," said Brown.

Directors: Wu Yan, Zhang Wanbao

Filmed by Zhang Wanbao

Video editor: Zhang Wanbao

Text by Wu Yan

Top image designer: Jia Jieqiong