I am Liu Chenglin, a recent graduate from school of Journalism and Communication Peking University and current master’s student at School of Arts Peking University, majoring in art management and cultural industry.

I started dancing when I was 6 years old, since then I have learned to dance traditional dance, folk dance, contemporary dance, street dance etc. in 17 years’ of time. Dancing came to be an indispensable part of my life and it never ceases to fascinate me. This is one of the most important reasons that I chose Art management and cultural industries as my major.

In the summer vacation after 3rd year in undergrad study, I joined New York Broadway Dance Center as a representative from Peking University Students Dance Group. It was my first time to deeply engage in the dance culture of Broadway. To be honest, I fell in love instantly with this open, comprehensive, diverse dancing culture. I got to experience totally different methods of training and performing, and was enchanted by its dynamic and rich culture.

Due to limited, restrained and immature intercultural and cross-cultural communication, it is difficult for nonprofessionals to get in touch with various art forms on a daily basis even domestically, not to mention truly understanding art cultures from abroad. Based on my communication background and dancing experience, I believe I made the most important and right choice in my life to choose Art management and cultural industries as my major.

I was elected the leader of Peking University Students Dance Group soon after I had a clear vision of what I want to do with my life. As a leader, I learnt many things regarding field knowledge and art management, which surely would be of great help to me considering my major. I realized as an art manager, the most important task is not just to present my individual, personal piece of work and let the audience passively accept it, but to make it more vivid and interactive that more people would be attractive by dance art and have an innate urge to try dancing by themselves.

Motivated to make the dance art more accessible to the public, I offered free dance class for college students from the beginning of this year, which at the end of the semester has proved to be very successful. I hope to continue offering free dance classes, educate the public, and by doing so, I believe it would eventually add up to the effort to spread the Chinese dance culture to the world. Given a chance, I would also strive to bring excellent art culture from overseas to our home, for I believe art grows rich and vigorous through intercultural communication.

I am really glad to join NCRICA’s research group. I hope to get more opportunities to further my journey in academic pursuit but also hone my professional skills through working with great masters in next three years, so that I can make a step closer to my dream of being a bridge between different cultures.