Culturama was a very rewarding experience that I am very glad I participated in. It is a dance production where the cultures of many different countries are presented and celebrated. I was part of the USA dance, where we did a mixture of jive and hip hop as well as elements of jazz. One of my main takeaways was learning how to work together in order to end up with a dance that was neat and ran smoothly. Along the way, we learnt that we would all need to put in as much time and effort, because otherwise we would not have been as clean as we were. The setbacks we faced, such as having to change parts of our music right at the last minute, brought us all closer together despite having to do extra rehearsals or put in extra time.
One of the challenges I faced was learning a new style of dance. I have a background in contemporary and ballet, so I had to go out of my comfort zone to do a very different style of dance. Ballet is a very controlled style of dance where every position is fixed, so I had to get used to being more relaxed in my movements and try to not be as controlled. I am very glad I was a member of the dance because I was able to expand my dancing styles, and I found out that I really enjoyed doing these types of dance.
Overall, Culturama was a great experience because I could not only make lots of new friends but also learn and dance styles that I had not tried before. Since it was my second Culturama, I felt a lot more confident throughout the audition process all the way to the final performance, and was definitely sad for it to end because it was our dance leader’s last Culturama before graduation, and I had a lot of fun through the process.
