Place: South Island School, 2/F, Hall
Time: Saturday 6:00PM~9:00PM
CAS Type: Creativity, Action
The International Evening has always been a very important event for me, as I have attended it from year 8. This one was going to be my 5th time attending the event. In the past years, I have always been doing a Korean modern dance and Korean drumming (samulnori). However, this year, I decided to do a singing act aswell, as I have always had the passion for singing.
Practice
Dance
To prepare for the dance audition, we first had to decide on a song and a dance. At first, we decided to do a Korean dance, which was danced by a Korean pop idol group, “Miss A”. We were planning to dance to Miss A’s “Good girl Bad girl” and started learning the dance steps. During the past years, we always did the dance with mostly the same people and the preparation for the dance allowed us to collaborate with each other, and develop our skills of dancing. By looking back at the videos of when we danced, it reminded me of a lot of memories. Even so, every year, we challenged ourselves with harder and harder dance steps.
When learning the steps, we would use a computer, watch dance, and trying to follow it. In addition, we would always borrow a dance studio or an activity room (which has a mirror) but this year, we planned to come in early in Tuesday morning and stay after school on Friday. By doing this, it not only save time but money as well
After a few weeks of preparation, we did the audition, but the judges considered us to choose another song and dance. Therefore, we decided to change the song and dance to something different. In the end, we decided to collaborate 3 different songs together and try a different approach from the other years. The final songs involved “Lip Gloss” by Lil Mama, “Pokerface” by Lady Gaga and another song. Then, after a few days of intense preparation, we were finally prepared, and were in for the US act.
For the singing act, I was planning to do an individual song, but in the end, I did it with another friend. Again, for this act, I would practice the song at home whenever I had time, by recording my voice with the computer and listening back to it for improvement.
For the Korean drumming act, we decided to do a similar kind of drumming sequence. As we had Korean Drumming every week, we were able to practice after each session with our peers.
After practicing for all the act every week, the day of the International evening was coming up. Before the day of the performance, we had a rehearsal after school. The rehearsal was very tiring, as we needed to put all the acts together with the MC’s. However, even though the day was passing by, we were unable to finish the whole performance. As we had another rehearsal on Saturday, we had to come in school by 10:00.
The day of the performance came! but we were still not fully prepared. We needed to rehearse for the whole performance including the finale. The first thing we prepared for was the finale, as we needed to keep it out of the way. After a long day’s rehearsal, we finally finished the run through of the performance. However, we still felt a little unprepared as the practice of the whole performance seemed to be last minute.
Before the actual performance started, we ate dinner and prepared our costumes. As I had 3 acts, I needed to get changed very quickly during the performance. Finally, it was 6 o’clock and people started to come in with their tickets. As my first act was the Korean drumming, me and our members were dressed in the traditional clothes. As we were the opening act, we were standing by, and slowly became creeping in from the back of the hall. No one noticed us when we were at the back of the hall, as the audience were all engaged by the MC’s talking. Then, we started the performance with loud banging of our drums. It scared some of the audiences’. After finishing the Korean drumming performance, I got changed to the singing costume as quickly as possible and waited at the backstage until the act before us finished. As I had changed very quickly and was nervous, I was quite out of breath, which was not very good as I needed to sing… However, as the person I was singing with started the song first, I had time to catch my breath. And then, the singing began, and we were performing (: I was a little nervous, but it ended well. The last act which I was involved in was the dance. I was most excited with this act. Again, I changed as quickly as possible, and for this dance, we had tables as props. After Preparing the props with the curtains closed, we sat down on the chair and stayed in our starting pose. The curtains opened, and the lights were off. The dance was going to start when someone hit my table. Bang. Spot light. The dance started. It was the most exciting act I was doing, and I enjoyed it as much as possible. After dancing to the three songs, we finished our final act and went back to the standby room. Now, we just had to wait for the finale.
The finale started, and while walking up the stage, it seemed like our whole International team achieved a lot. Although it seemed like we were unprepared before the show, it went on smoothly and we were able to enjoy the whole process of finishing the International evening. However, although we finished the whole show, I did kind of feel sad that there was no more rehearsals and the hard times of getting everyone together. I guess it will be a memory which I will enjoy looking back.
Now, we had one more year, and then it would end our International evening performance in South Island School D: Even now, we sometimes discuss what we should perform next year, as we want to end our last performance in International evening as the best one (:
REFLECTION
L1 : I planned to improve upon how well synchronized our dance was, and challenge myself with the choreography performed. For the Korean drumming, I wanted to improve upon ‘enjoying’ the show, and playing the instrument with a flow of rhythm. In addition, for singing, I wanted to boost my confidence, as I have stage fright when singing. Overall, I was able to challenge myself, and build confidence.
The performances all had elements that helped me increase my strengths and improve on areas that I needed growth. All of the planned elements were achieved.
L2: A new challenge was taken, I practiced a new dance which had different dance movements. Moreover, we used tables as props and approached the dance in a different way. In addition, it was the first time to do a singing act.
The singing act was the most significant challenge for me during the night. The new dance choreography helped me face another challenge and these helped me develop new skills.
L3: We planned on the time and date of when to do the dance practices, and this was carried out in order to do the audition.
The planned times were all met during the practices.
L4: While dancing, we needed to collaborate with other people, and make sure that everyone cooperated. The singing act also included aspects of working with other people, as we had to divide the parts. Moreover, we also had to cooperate with the IE team when doing the rehearsals and auditions.
We collaborated with our team members for the dance, singing and korean drumming act, and we also cooperated with the IE team members.
L5: I attended to all the rehearsals which reflected upon my perseverance. In addition, we also kept practicing whenever we had time.
Overall, there was new challenges undertaken, and there was a lot of collaborative work with my team members as well as the international evening team. Although there were some problems in finishing the rehearsals with many teams, in the end the event was successful.
Throughout the experience, I was able to face new challenges and also develop on current skills. The performance during the night was very successful as there was a lot of time that was spent to prepare for it.
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