LO2&LO5

Culturama is a yearly dance performance, which all high schoolers has a chance participate through auditions. This dance showcase particularly showcases different cultures through a form of art, to which our school highly prioritises as it brings a lot of enthusiasm and unity within our school. Having participated in culturama for 3 years, I’ve seen how dances of some cultures have developed, and how every year there’s always so many new dances and so much creativity involved – it’s difficult to be really creative for different cultures where its dances has been showcased already, because often times we’re not fully knowledge in that culture, thus we need to make sure it is expressed appropriately. This year I’m involved in the Spain dance – we have one partner dance and one dance where only the girls are involved in.

I participated in Culturama again because I was supposed to be a choreographer for a dance this year, but due to other responsibilities and exams, I couldn’t find the time to audition with a new choreography. However, I still enjoy dancing a lot and I love the process that goes into these shows – from learning the dance, to perfecting it with all the stage lights and effects, as well as expressing the culture even more with amazing costumes and makeup. The week of the show is the most exhausting with all the run throughs, but seeing the audience cheering on and enjoying the show makes me very happy and accomplished. Some strengths that I have expressed throughout our rehearsals are creativity, collaboration and communication. I’ve worked quite a bit with the dance leaders to offer insights on positions from a dancer’s point of view – I think I really helped as I have my past dance experiences, and my leader appreciated my insights which boosted our dance creativity. It’s really difficult to figure out spacing and transitions with more than 20 people because we need to ensure transitions are smooth and convenient for everyone in terms of where they are on stage. I work well with others in dances as firstly, I am quite used to the dance showcase processes and I can easily communicate with other members to clarify moves, or to help them out with anything. If there’s any misunderstandings or new ideas for spacing, I could easily communicate it with my dance leaders without hesitation – I understand for some people it’s difficult to speak up as they don’t want to make dance leaders mad for saying something wrong, but for me I like to think it’s better to communicate about all the possible outcomes and ideas and come to a conclusion. It’s better to have an idea rejected than not trying at all. 

Within our group, some challenges we faced is giving all of our attention to the leaders – sometimes we get caught up with clarifying moves with each other, or get excited with new movements. I think it especially comes from the challenge of getting everyone in the dance to show up on extra rehearsal days on weekends and after school – I’m definitely guilty of this as I had other commitments such as football tournaments which I was unable to miss, and so when we do miss any rehearsals, it’s as if we’re taking two steps forward and then one step back. Every one of us definitely has a responsibility within the group to make an effort and commit to our rehearsals, as we’re all dependent on each other to make our dance perfect. A new skill I developed throughout this dance process is resilience, where I learned how to push through set backs such as being unmotivated – also when I did miss any choreography, I had to keep my head up and take time to learn it through my mistakes.

Next week is our show, and thanks to my past show experiences, I’m already anticipating what’s to come – the long rehearsals days, which I’m worried will affect my studying time. But hopefully I manage my time well, and also get in some active hours too. I’m excited to see all the other dances, and see how they all come together.

<– Photo of how leaders planned our positions and transitions