Upon completing our dance and performance I feel a sense of pride in what we managed to produce in such a short time frame. I found it quite challenging to perform onstage as it is not something that I am used to doing, especially having to perform to so many people. I was quite afraid of falling over or making a mistake, however after the second performance I feel that I became more confident in myself and began to enjoy performing. After participating in Culturama hopefully I have developed some dancing skills as well as the confidence to put myself in challenging positions in areas where I am less confident. I have also decided that I quite like performing and so I have now signed up for another one of our schools dance shows, Kahanni.
When being a part of a show where there are many people relying on you, commitment is key. I was committed to going to the required lunch time rehearsals in the weeks leading up to the show. Weekend rehearsals were harder to commit too and when I missed one I felt like I had let my dance down. If you didn’t show up you wouldn’t understand how do the dance correctly or make the correct formations. As a result of this you were letting the whole group down as the entire dance would look messy. Timing with school work and swimming was definitely an issue I found I had, especially in the final week leading up to the show. It became quite frustrating when every time the same people would not show up to rehearsals. However we all helped each other to catch up and learn the steps so that everyone was one the same page. Finding times where everyone could make extra rehearsals was difficult but we all persevered by holding each other accountable. Everyone wanted to perform something that they were proud of so we all felt that we owed it to our dance and to each other to show up to every rehearsal and give our best.
Working with different people across High School was very rewarding as I now have some broader friendships. Overall performing in Culturama was an incredibly memorable experience for me as I put myself out of my comfort zone in front of a large audience. I would definitely do it again not only because it was really fun experience but also because I developed new skills and confidence in myself. I feel like dancing and performing is always something that I’ve been wary of participating in as I didn’t have the skills and the time. CAS has allowed me to explore a different area to what I would have usually participated in and I have found that I really enjoy dancing.
Here is the link to the video of our performance.
