Amateur dancer Chen Wenli (left in front row), 52, spends her own money learning from professional dancers, and she teaches what she has learned to the members of her troupe. [Photo by Hou Shiping/For China Daily]

Amateur dancer Chen Wenli, 52, has benefited both physically and spiritually from dedication to her dance troupe. It is her commitment to organizing and leading her troupe through various competitions, she said, and finally winning awards and prestige for the dancers that has given added meaning to her life.

When she was working as a statistician at a refrigeration plant after high school in Beijing in 1987, Chen never imagined that she would one day become obsessed with dancing.

She also worked as a model for an advertising company after the plant went bankrupt in 1990. She suffered a bone fracture during pregnancy in 1996, which had made it impossible for her to do any exercise, and as a result she started to put on weight after giving birth to her son. She decided that she must lose it.

She started to do aerobics in a fitness center, her first contact with dance, which she said, along with her experience as a model, had prepared her for the position she would enthusiastically take as the head of an amateur dancing troupe.

Fate also intervened in the form of cancer. She underwent surgery to remove her ovaries because of cancer, and a tumor in her mouth was taken out in 2009. She put on weight again after the operations, and developed depression. As a divorcee, the heavy load on her to take care of her son and her aged parents was a burden that was difficult to deal with.

"I know that I must lift myself out of the depression," Chen said. Her experience of once working as a self-employed restaurant owner, clothes seller and other odd jobs helped her develop the perseverance and strong will to overcome any difficulty.

She joined the elderly women who would square dance every day in the Haidian district residential compound, where she had just moved into. She became obsessed with dance, lost weight and developed a positive attitude.

When many of her fellow dancers expressed their desire to learn more complicated routines, Chen organized them into a troupe.

Chen was made the head, which meant the responsibility of teaching new dances, buying costumes, choreographing and doing chores that were necessary to make the troupe successful.

Chen spent her own money learning from professional dancers, and then she taught what she had learned to the members of her troupe. She found theaters for them to use free of charge, and also sought opportunities for her troupe to give performances.