This is my third year in CultuRama, and I am really happy to have gotten into Nigeria. It has been around a month since CultuRama rehearsals have started and I am really enjoying it so far.

My initial goals for CultuRama this year was to improve my collaboration skills with others (LO5) and to take upon the challenge of learning how to do a completely different form of dancing, Nigerian dancing (LO2). I feel like these goals overall will be very beneficial for me as it will improve my collaboration skills, which is a very good skill to have, and this will also make me more of an optimistic person as I am willing to learn new things.

So far in our rehearsals, we have been learning the dance and perfecting it. I had my light plot earlier today and it was so fun to do the dance on the stage with all the colourful lights. Our rehearsals are every Saturday morning and we have also had some Friday afterschool rehearsals. Personally, I feel like during the Friday rehearsals I am very tired due to the long school day hence when I dance I lack the energy and the vibe. Therefore for the following rehearsals, I need to make more of an effort to be energetic so that it doesn’t seem like I am bored because of the dance (even though I am just tired).

Other than that, I am really enjoying all of the rehearsals, as I really enjoy learning the Nigerian dance, which is a completely new dance style, hence it is a challenge for me. I feel like in order to overcome the challenge of learning this new dance style I just have to keep practising this dance as much as I can in my free time so that I get the moves perfect and so that I am able to vibe with the music. Through this challenge, I was definitely able to develop a new dancing skill, but I also able to develop a bit more confidence in my dancing because I realised that in order to make this style of dance look good, I need to have confidence. It was definitely not easy to develop this confidence in my dancing, but I feel like I could definitely see my confidence during the light plot (which was earlier today) since I really just went full out and enjoyed dancing on stage with the colourful lights, and I just felt like my dancing was on point (as I was vibing with the song). I feel like it will be very beneficial for me if I managed to improve my confidence in ballet as well since it will definitely make my dancing look much better. Through the Nigeria CultuRama dance, I was also able to develop the skill of dancing with feeling hence making my dancing look so much better. This skill is very beneficial for ballet as well because we always need to dance with feeling so that we don’t look like mere robots. (LO2)

Through CultuRama, I have also been able to develop my collaboration skills as I had to collaborate with the other dancers in my team in order to make the dance look very good. Personally, I found it easy to work with the other dancers since we all have a collective goal of making this dance look amazing, hence they all were willing to answer any questions that I had about the dance. I found it really fun to make new friends through this dance, and I didn’t face any challenges while working with the other dancers, it was a very smooth and enjoyable experience. (LO5)

I am really looking forward to the final CultuRama recording, which will take place around two weeks from now!