Coach Donnell Brings AISG High School Dance Team to Beijing

Coach Donnell has been working with the AISG High School Dance Team for two years now. AISG is a member of APAC, a group of 12 international schools throughout Asia who come together to hold competitions for sports, and festivals for the arts programs.  This year, AISG traveled to Beijing to have their annual dance festival along with schools from Manila, Seoul, and Beijing.

While there, the students took master classes in the Hip Hop, Contemporary, and Traditional Chinese Dance genresas well as seminars on how to choreograph, and the benefits of conditioning with yoga. In addition, they were split into small groups mixed of kids from each school to choreograph and perform a full routine at the end of festival performance. These students only had a total of 5 hours to complete this task, which is an amazing accomplishment!

Along with those routines, the schools each performed a routine they brought from home and had been working very hard on for the past two months. Varsity and Coach Donnell could not be more proud of how hard the team worked this season, and is very impressed with how strong the program has become in such a short time frame! We also are extremely proud of our student Gwen, who not only is on our Sr. Competition Prep Team at Varsity, but also served as the captain of AISG’s Dance Team and without whom, the program wouldn’t have been possible. We can’t wait until next year’s season begins!

The authors：

Donnell Hoernig has been dancing for 25 years. She went to college on a full tuition dance scholarship at Hawaii Pacific University, where she was the captain of the national champion dance team, and holds four national collegiate championship titles. While at Hawaii Pacific she studied business and graduated with her MBA. Donnell has taught for Varsity for many years, traveling all across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia to teach dance, choreograph, judge national competitions and help train coaches. She is absolutely thrilled to be here in China to share her knowledge and expertise!