When the young students of Beijing’s Mengqi Art Center competed in the 19th Beijing Dance Competition Outstanding Works Showcase, they didn’t just take home the first prize trophy and go instantly internet-viral with their jaw-dropping and one-of-a-kind dance routine, but also called out the infamously brutal education standards that fill Asian students with extreme pressure.
The kids’ performance of “The Tortoise and Hare Race Again” went viral on TikTok and Reddit, amassing more than 5.7 million YouTube views since hitting the site last summer. Music Man readers can watch the children’s mind-blowing dance unfold in the video below…
The all-female dancers enter the stage, all aged between five and ten. They’re split into two groups: half dressed as pink hares, and half as green tortoises, to imaginatively recreate Aesop’s classic fable.
Each group crafts a spellbinding optical illusion: the bunny-eared hares pouncing like true rabbits across the stage, and the shell-wearing tortoise dancers forming a perfect impression of the real-world animal, all mixed in with some captivating, interpretive dance moves.
Their outstandingly difficult choreography comes served at a professional level, seeming far beyond the young students’ years; every beat marked with wonder and awe as the illusion plays out. And it might lead some of us Westerners to worry for the children’s well-being, considering the infamously rigid expectations and pressure placed upon young students across Asia. Yet, this is exactly the story the students tell through their dance: the impossible race which forces kids to compete for high grades, rather than enjoy their childhoods freely.
As one top commenter on this viral performance noticed, “I’m glad it got famous. It brings up very deep and important issues in our society. At the end you can see them throwing their masks because they’re only kids after all forced to be in a race while having naturally different abilities and skills.”
But that’s not all. The lyrics to the dance’s backing track detail the high-intensity timetable and overload of schoolwork that even primary school students are subjected to in Beijing, which, once translated into English, end in a long series of “no, no, no, no, no”’s.
It’s a routine based in pure inception and irony: over-trained dancers performing a routine which calls out over-training across the school system. Yet, it’s an absolutely breathtaking piece of art, dedication, skill, and bravery, backed by a story which desperately needs to be told.
One viewer even commented, “This moves me to tears whenever I watch it. As a teacher, it’s hard to see struggling students fail, because what they fail is a rigid system, not life. So you do everything you can to bridge the gaps. But the system also fails us educators and, no matter how deep our compassion runs, our energy isn’t infinite.”