For Li Wenqian, sign language is more than a means of communication; it's an art form.

And both the meanings were on show when she led 109 hearing-impaired dancers to perform at the Paralympic Games opening ceremony on Saturday.

With the help of three colleagues, the China Disabled People's Art Troupe dance instructor used sign language to instruct the dancers during the Non-stop Dance Moves show. The performers had put ballet shoes on their hands and knelt around 12-year-old Li Yue, moving their arms as if they were legs.

This was a monumental moment for the teacher because little Li lost one of her legs in the Sichuan earthquake.

"Before the performance, I stood alone gazing out of the stadium from the backstage, thinking: 'I've never performed for such a grand event'," Li Wenqian recalls.

"We couldn't help sweating in excitement. I prayed silently for a successful show."

The show, as the entire world knows by now, was a huge success, reinforcing her determination to carry on with her "sacred career". She says: "It's such a sacred career, though a lot of time is required to repeat things and it needs a lot of patience."

Li graduated from the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts as a dance major before joining the art troupe in July. Apart from the impressive One-thousand-hand Bodhisattva show, telecast on China Central Television's Spring Festival gala night, she had not seen any of the group's performances before becoming its instructor. But not knowing the sign language was a much greater problem.

On her first day, she found to her surprise that the troupe members coordinated their movements through controlled breaths. She was overwhelmed by their kindness and the innocence in their eyes, especially those of lead dancer Tai Lihua. "She looked as beautiful in extravagant onstage attire as she did in plain rehearsal clothes," Li says.

It took her three months to grasp the sign language, and soon she led the troupe in performing the One-thousand-hand Bodhisattva.

"It was totally different from dancing myself. I was worried about giving incorrect instructions or conducting too quickly," she recalls. But the show went well, and she began to realize the value of such work.

That taught her something, which she preaches now: instructors who teach in the sign language should first interpret a dance's themes and emotional undertones to the performers.

That is why the instructors shared little Li Yue's story with the performers before beginning work on Non-stop Dance Moves. "We wanted them to be Li Yue, to be her missing leg, to be anyone who longs for a dream to come true," instructor Li says.

Once the dancers had memorized the movements of each chapter, the teachers would begin playing the music full blast so they could feel the percussion's rhythm by pressing their ears against the speakers.

About half the Non-stop Dance Moves performers were professionals from the troupe, the rest were untrained dancers from several disabled people's associations from around the country. These people were starting from scratch, and "we had less than four months before the rehearsals", she said.

The greatest challenge was getting the performers, from 10 to 34 years old, to move in synchrony. Moreover, the directing team would change the dance steps every day.

"But despite everything, the dancers were very cooperative. We encouraged each other from the first day till the last minute of the final rehearsal," Li says.

"The troupe is like a big, warm family. The teachers and artists understand each other very well and our mutual love and care are beyond words," she says.

"Most of the time, I don't feel like their teacher rather (I feel) like their mother and sister. It would break my heart not to see them every day."

(China Daily 09/10/2008 page1)