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When the world-renowned H.T. Chen and Dancers troupe came to perform and conduct workshops at Hamilton, Nicole Caporusso wasted little time meeting Chen himself. After all, the two have a lot in common.

Nicole, a dance and East Asian studies double major, had just returned from Hamilton's Beijing program and a summer studying ballet in New York. Soon after meeting the Shanghai-born artistic director, the two conversed in Chinese for a half-hour.

"We talked about my semester in China and my background in dance. He asked me why I went to China, and I said 'to speak Chinese,'" Nicole said. "He told me about the dance companies and schools in Beijing, and I said I planned to go to New York City after graduation to dance." She made such an impression that he invited her to visit his Manhattan studio.

Nicole had completed three semesters of Chinese before studying abroad, but it was living in Beijing that allowed her to hone her skills. Hamilton's Associated Colleges in China program requires total immersion in the language with students making a formal pledge that they will only speak Chinese.

"It made me happy not only to meet H.T. Chen, but to be able to have a conversation in Chinese. Even though it had been months since I last spoke it regularly, everything came back to me," she said.

Nicole hopes one day to continue her Chinese language skills and possibly study East Asian art history, but her immediate goal is to dance. She has spent the last three summers in New York City taking dance classes at the Joffrey Ballet School and the Paul Taylor Dance Company, as well as assisting with ballet classes at Ballet Academy East.

"I've been told that if you find something you love and you can make it your career, that's the best way to live," she said. "If I'm going to be a dancer, I have to pursue that now, but I'm lucky to have something else I love, too."

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