WEI Yi, a Junior 2 student at Beijing No 2 Middle School, has been given some unusual homework to do this week. She has to do sit-ups (仰卧起坐)! Why? Because they'll make her a better dancer.

Wei is a member of the Jinfan Dance Team at her school.

Students dancing at Beijing No 2 Middle School.

"Dancing makes me more ladylike and graceful (优雅的)," she says.

Every Wednesday and Saturday after school, Wei goes to a dance class with over 50 other students.

They are such good dancers that they are being shown dancing on CCTV this week.

Most of the members of the team are girls, from Junior 1 to Senior 3. And most of them started to dance at an early age.

One of them is Gao Xiaozhu, a Junior 1 student. "When I was seven, my mum was in a dance class," Gao says. "One day, I met her teacher and asked him to teach me to dance, as dancing's always made me happy."

But you can't always be happy as a dancer. Sometimes, dancers get hurt.

"Our teacher says dancing makes us beautiful inside and out," says Hao Shuai, one of the seven boys on the Jinfan Dance Team. "So getting hurt won't stop us practicing. We want to be beautiful!"