Leading a graceful revival

Uygur choreographer Kurax Rejep performs on the dap hand drum while students from the Beijing Dance Academy practice Xinjiang folk dance.[Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

He may be 60, but Kurax Rejep, an Uygur choreographer who has just spent five years preparing a guide for dancers, is moving on to his next project－a book. Chen Nan reports.

Dozens of students from the Beijing Dance Academy surround Kurax Rejep as the 60-year-old Uygur choreographer performs on the dap hand drum.

At one point, a student with long braided hair in an pink silk dress and wearing a dopa (a traditional four-pointed flat hat), calls to Rejep: "Professor, don't stop playing. We want to dance."

As he quickens the beat, the students start to dance to the rhythm.

They are in the process of wrapping up a show in the academy's Black Box Theater, which showed nearly 20 kinds of dances from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, including a mask dance, a horse-racing dance and an eagle dance. Most are hundreds of years old and are rarely performed in the capital.

"Most in the audience are impressed by the Xinjiang dances and with the happy atmosphere brought about by fast movements and joyful music," says Rejep, a veteran choreographer from Urumqi. "But the show reveals just a small number of Xinjiang dances. We want to show something different."

Rejep has spent three months preparing for the show with the ethnic and folk dance majors.

The show also marks the end of a project to prepare teaching material for dancers, titled Ethnic and Folk Dances of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which took Rejep around five years to complete.