JOINVILLE, Brazil (AP) -- Tchaikovsky tinkles from the piano and the room-length mirror fills with schoolboy faces, their eyes as tense as the thin bodies that dip and rise, striving to please an instructor who can barely speak their language.
They all knew the Bolshoi Ballet school was tough. Still, for students like 9-year-old Rafael da Silva, just getting this far was even tougher.Rafael is among the 132 needy children who receive a full scholarship to the school, the Bolshoi's first outside Russia. Too poor to attend even a regular dance academy, Rafael sees the opportunity as a minor miracle.
"Maybe my sister up in heaven is helping me," he said. "She always wanted me to be a dancer. Now I am fulfilling that dream."
Bringing the school to this southern Brazilian city was itself something of a miracle. Beating out bids from Japan and the United States, Joinville (pronounced zho-een-VEE-lee) opened the school this past March -- after just 57 days of preparations.
Not that the city is a stranger to classical ballet. An industrial hub of 400,000 people, Joinville is renowned for its large German colony, a boisterous Oktoberfest and its annual international dance festival in July, the largest in South America.
Joinville's trump card was Jo Braska Negrao, a veteran international artist who once taught modern dance at the Bolshoi in Moscow. There she met her husband, Joao Ribeiro Prestes, the son of Brazil's legendary communist leader Luiz Carlos Prestes, and his influence made negotiations easier.
From Moscow they brought three teachers, as well as the Bolshoi's strict methodology and eight-year curriculum.