AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Dance is of­ten de­scribed as an art form that tran­scends bound­aries and trans­forms lives. For Zi­dane Roop­nar­ine, it did just that—lead­ing him all the way to Bei­jing, Chi­na.

Roop­nar­ine al­ways knew he had a deep love for dance, but it wasn’t tak­en se­ri­ous­ly un­til his in­ter­ac­tions with a teacher at Vish­nu Boys’ Hin­du Col­lege. De­spite hav­ing no for­mal dance train­ing, he com­pet­ed in var­i­ous com­pe­ti­tions, show­cas­ing his nat­ur­al tal­ent.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia from Bei­jing, it was dur­ing his sec­ondary school years that he knew what ca­reer path he had to pur­sue.

“With the wis­dom my dra­ma teacher im­part­ed on me, I was like, I want to do some­thing that is mean­ing­ful and that I am go­ing to en­joy for the rest of my life,” Roop­nar­ine said.

Af­ter some re­search, he de­cid­ed to pur­sue a Bach­e­lor in Fine Arts de­gree with a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in dance at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts.

But up­on grad­u­at­ing, dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, he ex­plored what more he could un­der­take to fur­ther de­vel­op his skills and pro­pel the arts. This led him to sub­mit his ap­pli­ca­tion for a schol­ar­ship of­fered by the Dai Ail­ian Foun­da­tion here in T&T. The foun­da­tion is named in ho­n­our of Chi­nese-Trinida­di­an renowned dancer and bal­le­ri­na Dai Ail­ian, known uni­ver­sal­ly as the ‘moth­er of Chi­nese mod­ern dance’.

Born in Cou­va, Madame Dai went on to found the pres­ti­gious Bei­jing Dance Acad­e­my. Through the foun­da­tion, lo­cal stu­dents with a pas­sion for study­ing the art form are giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ceive fund­ing.

Roop­nar­ine said that he was not con­fi­dent at first ap­ply­ing for the schol­ar­ship but kept faith that if it was meant for him, it would come his way.

As you would ex­pect, Roop­nar­ine was grant­ed this schol­ar­ship, but trav­el­ling to a dis­tant coun­try like Chi­na was a daunt­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“My fam­i­ly couldn’t process me leav­ing and go­ing to Chi­na, which is like halfway across the world, right? And not speak­ing the lan­guage, look­ing at fund­ing, you know, all of these dif­fer­ent things. And I’m like, It’s go­ing to work it­self out.”

Though hes­i­tant, Roop­nar­ine’s fam­i­ly ral­lied around the as­pir­ing dancer for this new chap­ter.

De­spite an ex­haust­ing three-day jour­ney, he knew he had to adapt quick­ly to the fast-paced en­vi­ron­ment.

Since Sep­tem­ber 2024, Roop­nar­ine said his ex­pe­ri­ence in Bei­jing has been life-chang­ing. Oth­er than the 12-hour time dif­fer­ence, he still had many ad­just­ments to make to ful­ly ad­just to his new en­vi­ron­ment, such as cash­less pay­ments or util­is­ing the metro for pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

As ex­pect­ed, com­mu­ni­ca­tion was a chal­lenge, as his Man­darin-speak­ing teach­ers and in­struc­tors knew very lit­tle Eng­lish.

Along with his Man­darin lessons, which he con­tin­ues to take with an­oth­er Trin­bag­on­ian stu­dent, he has al­so de­vel­oped the habit of in­ter­pret­ing ver­bal cues to keep up in his class­es.

“Some­times the teach­ers may not know how to cor­rect you or may not know how to speak, you just nav­i­gate that. Al­so, this may not be the right thing to say or do, but I like to make peo­ple laugh and be a clown. And the teach­ers love it and give me the need­ed at­ten­tion based on that,” Roop­nar­ine laugh­ing­ly said.

An­oth­er shock was the dis­ci­pline and ded­i­ca­tion de­vot­ed to pre­serv­ing the cul­tur­al arts.

The acad­e­my acts as a board­ing school, where a great num­ber of the stu­dents, as young as the age of ten, live full-time on cam­pus and pur­sue their for­mal school ed­u­ca­tion along with for­mal dance train­ing. This, he said, is a tes­ta­ment to how much Chi­na en­sures the preser­va­tion of their cul­ture.

“The dancers here start­ed at such a young age, and by age 20, they are al­ready look­ing like pro­fes­sion­als. Where­as for me, I start­ed at age 17, un­pro­fes­sion­al­ly. But for me, even be­ing in the same class as them, it is still valu­able to me. My leg isn’t at the high­est de­gree, but I work with what I have.”

While Roop­nar­ine has learned var­i­ous Chi­nese art forms and clas­si­cal dance, he re­mains a proud am­bas­sador of so­ca mu­sic and dance, which he says has been warm­ly re­ceived at the dance acad­e­my.

“Mu­sic gives a sense of free­dom and hap­pi­ness. So when I was able to ex­pose that re­al­i­ty to my Chi­nese col­leagues and friends, you could see a whole new side of them that they had nev­er un­cov­ered be­fore.|

“The peo­ple of Chi­na love to ul­ti­mate­ly be kind and nice. Some of them would buy me Chi­nese snacks. Some of them will buy me food, and I’m like, ‘No, no, no.’ But they will be like, ‘Yes, yes,’” Roop­nar­ine said.

When asked which food he miss­es most from home, Roop­nar­ine’s re­sponse was en­tire­ly un­der­stand­able.

“I could use ah dou­ble right now. Ah good roti. Ah good pelau!”