Crybaby's Lair: Utsav 2012

Utsav 2012 had just concluded. It was less hype than last year but the effort our college put in was definitely 110%. This year we practically tried to showcase our “Semagat Satu Malaysia” in all the events we signed up. Diverse and yet united we stand.

I was involved in 4 events. Instrumental, Cultural Parade, Western Group Singing and Western Group Dancing. I will write about them one by one later. As for this year’s Utsav, I tried to make it a point to show the very Chinese side of me for all the events I participated. Not that I’m being racist but I think it’s important to know the cultural background you come from but yet learn to respect and live with others that are different from you. That, I think is Malaysia for you.

I had two events on the first day. The first was Instrumental. For this year, they have combined classical and non- classical Indian into just one. I had to excuse myself from cons practical class that afternoon. The audience this year was smaller than last year. Ms. Anitha and Qi Ying from batch 26 was there to cheer me on. I was the 7^th one to go on stage. To play on with my theme, I choose to play back the Chinese classical song which I performed in the Interbatch competition. Initially there were some major slips, but I was able to recover and gain back some confident. The audiences’ expressions were all blank; probably the song sounded foreign to them or maybe my playing was just that bad. Well, at least I tried to be different.

Moving on to the second event, cultural parade, I was involved in the Chinese Umbrella dance. Jewel choreographed the dance and we rented the umbrellas from Basha. We also made the long Qi Pao to add up the looks. As a whole, the theme was colour blind Asia. This time we included the Malay’s Kuda Kepang and Piring dance, Indian classical dance and also the Kadazan’s Sumazau dance. The dancers were all blind folded. The whole event concluded with the dragon coming on stage and we removed our blind fold to signify that regardless of our differences, we see each other as the same. However, despite our colourful outfits, the standards of the dances drop as compared to last year. We only landed at 4^th place. It was actually quite devastating.

Moving on, I had the next two events on the third day. Group singing was first. The group comprised of Esther, Silk, Cheryl, Halim, Digen and me. Jin Heng was our accompanist. Esther led the whole group and help sort out the harmonies. Our aim was just to have the crowd going and singing along. The practices started some 3 weeks before the competition. We had a hard time in our song selection as the time limit kept changing. After going through many songs, we landed with 4 Non Blonde’s What’s Going On, Hercules’s Go the Distance, Bruno Mars’s Marry You and Katy Perry’s Part of Me. Our concept was to start off with a slow number and end it with a faster and stronger beat. However, we failed to bring out the concept on stage. Nevertheless, it was a great experience and I had a wonderful time jamming together.

Next on that day was Western Group Dancing. We did a fusion between Chinese Water sleeve dance and Malay Javanese dance. We spent 2 weeks to prepare for it. Nabilah was in charge for the Malay dance while I was practically “forced” to take up the responsibility for the Chinese one. The whole dance was for 5 minutes; 2 minutes for the sleeve dance, 2 minutes for the Javanese dance and the last one minute for the fusion part. I’m not really sure about the preparation for the Malay dance so I can only share about the sleeve dance.

I was really stressed out at first as I was involved in many other activities. I wasn’t sure whether I can balance my time with this additional event. It was another merry-go-round to find team members. With Xin Yi and Jewel backing out, I needed to find another 4 more dancers to form a team. Luckily, my ever-sporting batch of juniors came to the rescue. I say, we really do work well together; a new experience. After forming a team, comes the choreography part. I was really nervous on this as I wasn’t really good at learning up dance steps, what more to make up the steps. I tried with one slow song but decide maybe it would be better just to copy someone else’s work. As I was browsing through YouTube for some inspiration, I stumble on one really nice performance by a group of student from Washington University. After showing it to the girls, they asked can they do it as the chorography was really graceful and soft. I spent a couple of nights (or rather early mornings) to learn up the steps; it wasn’t easy. In 3 practices, we finished the steps and after which we were off to polish our posture and synchronization. As for the ending fusion part, Nabilah and the gang taught us the steps. It was actually fun doing the Javanese contemporary dance. Each of us pair up with one Malay girl and we tried to picture ourselves as Hang Tuah as we fling our sleeve, constantly hitting our partners.

For the Chinese dancer, we wore full white costume. We made our Samfu top at Raj and the skirts, we rented them from Basha. I also decided to remake new longer and wider sleeves for a better effect on stage. As for the Malay dancer, they wore full black with golden yellow cloths tied around their waist and both index fingers. They also rented some gold jewelry to complete the whole Javanese look.

We were the 10^th one to perform that day. Before us, there were really wild and fierce performances by other colleges. They were literally tossing and forming mountains of people on stage which were really mind blowing. When it was our turn, we just tried to do our best. Not forgetting to mention, our audio was taken care by Yilane, lightings by Tian Yuan, backstage, make-up and hair were by Pei Yin and Esther. Really thank you guys, especially Yilane for being with us through every practice session even though you’re not involve. (She even accompanied us at 2 am in the morning to tried the stage) The results was announced the following day and guess what, we got 3^rd out of the 19 teams performed!

Other than the events I joined, our college did try to send participants for every event. We won 1^st for Classical Indian Solo Dance, 2^nd for Fashion Show and 3rd for Rongoli, Street Play and Cartooning. We earned a total of 50 points, finishing at 7^th place out of 20 other colleges.