The Gold Room on the second floor of the Wooden Center is serene as the students stretch to the tinkling notes of a piano. But then the music switches, and Massive Attack’s “What Your Soul Sings” fuels the loose, fluid warm-up.

Ballet traditionally focuses on strict form and body position. Classical music commands the stage of many of the most famous ballets.

With Sukha Gee as the instructor, neither of those stereotypes is perpetuated. Her playlist is a survey of world music as she jumps from lyrical to jazz to Indian tunes, and her teaching style focuses on the conjoining of soma and psyche, or body and mind.

Music certainly highlights her Thursday afternoon class as the students coupe and passe to Jay-Z.

As the class moves into form and position, the energy becomes more tangible – the students begin to move. Gee emphasizes two points as she teaches her students: Rediscover how your body moves, and then move as a unit with your body.

The structures of the main exercises are meticulous and dynamic, but only to serve the purpose of self-discovery. Gee ardently believes that dancing is a form of self-acceptance.

“She teaches us how to move beautifully. This is very new idea for me,” said Yukari Amasaki, a UCLA Extension student who has previously taken dance classes. “Many of my teachers said I was very controlling of myself. Since taking her class, I feel my body and soul is very relieved. I feel a freedom.”

Gee has learned from her own experiences how to better translate her teaching style, as she went through a period of self-discovery throughout her 20s. She jumped from dancing to aerobics back to dancing, and later, teaching.

“Mercifully, I got recognized by a Japanese company that was stealing the trademark of the sports connection. … They created this mecca of fitness, and they wanted to bring back instructors. They recognized me, and I was so emotional and high-powered, … so I went,” Gee said. “It was there that I realized that I wanted to get myself together and go back into dance.”

After coming back to the U.S. to dance, she built her reputation as a choreographer at a studio in West Hollywood. As an instructor, she taught a variety of Hollywood’s stars, including Meg Ryan, Demi Moore and Janice Dickinson.

Far from her friendly West Hollywood studio, Gee trained female inmates in hip-hop. “During that time of redefining myself, I became a sort of crazy, anomaly hip-hop choreographer,” Gee said. She received the opportunity to teach young girls in this style at a maximum-security detention facility. The experience led to more interaction with prison inmates as she went on to teach male prisoners as well.

The correlation between hardship and self-expression creates an important relationship with dance, which Gee recognized in the facilities.

“The losses that we incur in this life and the struggles and the sorrow that we experience soften us. Not only does it open our hearts, it opens our bodies. It makes us go inward, and in going inward, I think we then need to do something with that. And so, we express outwardly, we externalize, we use our bodies. I think it makes us more available,” Gee said.

Though her time with the inmates proved significant in her development as an instructor, she also finds teaching at UCLA rewarding.

In her 16 years at UCLA, Gee has taught a variety of classes. These include jazz, yoga, pilates, modern, shaka-laka stomp – a cross between ecstatic, modern and ethnic dance – namaste ballet and currently, contemporary ballet.

Gee’s inspiring efforts have helped students become more attuned to their bodies in ways that other methods of fitness cannot.

“I’ve taken the class for three years now. I kept taking it, and it’s been an approach for me that makes so much more sense for me than just lifting weights … or playing a sport. She’s really brought a big awareness for me of how to work with my body and accept the parts that aren’t working and slowly find growth,” said Brett Landenberger, a professor at UCLA of medieval and renaissance studies.

“While it is always a rush to witness someone who has a magnificent facility excel … The good juice is to watch someone that might not possess that kind of training, and might not have a great innate sense of themselves and their body, become aware of their challenges, meet their challenges and work through their stuff … really, truly grow,” Gee said.

As she continues to teach, Gee will continue to grow alongside her students.

“It ceaselessly inspires me to see [my students] work through their obstacles … and change.”