The sound of a drum can be heard
from miles away. It signifies a joyous moment in the Indian culture where a
celebration takes place. We knock drums for the celebration of life,
prosperity, engagement, and marriage. Tonight, the drums beat pulsated through
the west auditorium at my school and it was a sound that we felt through our
hearts.
This
year’s “Wonderful Night Show” was one of our foreign teacher’s last production.
Daniel Chen has been teaching at my school for 5 years and has proudly said,
“This is my paradise.” Having lived in China for over 12 years, he has moved
from school to school, place to place, but chose Neijiang as his last “hurrah.”
I am sure glad he did. When I first met Daniel, it was at our favorite, local
restaurant, “Big Dish,” or as he liked to call it, “Hot Momma.” If I could
describe Daniel, it would definitely be energetic. Why? Maybe it’s because for
a 55ish year old? man, he has the energy of a 25 year old. Sometimes, even I
became a little too much “popo” (grandma) in comparison to his energy. Daniel
grew up in Singapore to Chinese parents. He knows English and Chinese fluently
and can even throw up a few “sala” (jerk) slangs in Hindi! I was definitely
surprised when he told me “sala pilo” (drink, jerk!) one day at a formal banquet!
After suffering from continuous gout
the whole semester, he officially-and formally-decided to retire teaching in
China and head back home to Singapore. When he declared this, no one really
took him seriously because he said last year was going to be his “last year” at
our school. It was only until he sent in his formal paperwork did we all
believe him. Daniel has worked hard and dedicated everything from a spare room
at his apartment to thousands of yuan towards his students. With his elaborate
stories, potty mouth attitude, and a smoke in hand, I’ve always seen him as a giver. For this years “Wonderful Night,”
Daniel gave not only his money, but his undeniable energy towards directing a
100+ student show. He thought of every aspect of the show and as much as he
complained, cursed, shouted and sweated, the show became literally one of the
most “wonderful nights” at our school.
We started auditions for the show
around the end of March, beginning of April, and after countless of auditions
for singers, actors, and dancers, we picked amazing-passionate students who
loved the art of performing. I had volunteered to choreograph an Indian dance,
but had no idea of the work and energy it would take to do it. I was quickly
aware when I ended up auditioning about 50 dancers for just 6 places. After
much deliberation and the thankful support from my co-partner, Sonia, another
foreign teacher at my school, we finally found 6 lovely ladies who stood out
from the crowd.
We compiled our schedules to meet 3
times a week for an hour and a half, found dance space, picked a song within a
week and finally began rehearsals. I am a dancer that likes to dance to music
with a lot of beat and rhythm. As much as I love slower versions of Indian
dance, I think fast-paced dances bring a lot of energy and pizzazz to any
performance. Therefore, I couldn’t pass up “Nagada Saang Dhol,” a song
dedicated to the beat/sound of the drum. I wanted to show the motion of
knocking a drum without actually having one on stage because we didn’t have
time to make props and couldn’t recruit any male dancers to actually hit drums.
All the dance movements ended up being strong and powerful as if there was a
drum we were hitting at all times.
When it came to ordering costumes,
we turned to no other than Taobao, the Chinese version of maybe Amazon/Ebay.
You can find anything on Taoboa from butter and cheese to a boyfriend. Yes, you read that correctly. Amazon/Ebay
need to get on that. The costumes we found were as close to “Indian
looking” as we could get without crossing the line to too revealing and
inappropriate. Luckily, we found a great deal for a red and black costume for
about 40 yuan. Hallelujah. When I gave all our sizes to Daniel, who then
ordered and paid for all the costumes, he ended up ordering the wrong sizes for
most of the group. This was a blessing in disguise because if he would have
ordered all the sizes we would have given him originally, half of us would not
be able to fit in our costumes and the other half would have been swallowed by
theirs. In the end, we all looked like gypsies, but it’s okay!
The day of the show for me, did not
start well. I have been suffering by a mysterious bacterial infection for 4
weeks, so sometimes I spend my nights bloated and uncomfortable. Of course, my
infection chose the night before the show to act up. Heading over to our final
rehearsal, I felt fine. I wanted to be as helpful to Daniel as possible, who
literally had to say, “I’m gonna smoke outside and them I’m gonna yell at these
kids because they are not listening!” After about an hour and still rehearsing
the second act, I started to feel trouble in my stomach. Students ran around me
as they blew up balloons, applied make-up, worked on stage-direction, and all I
could do was hold my bloated stomach in pain. Before I knew it, I was up to
rehearse with my group and I had to stop dancing mid-way because of the
unbearable pain I felt. Worried and
completely anxious, I ran home to see if medicine and rehydration salts could
save me from wanting to crawl up into a ball all night. Thankfully, it did, but
it also left me rushing to apply the same make-up on every group member to keep
up with time. I can’t explain how much the support from my friends cheering me
on via WeChat and my awesome co-dance partner and jiejie (older sister), Sonia,
helped me relax and move forward.
Looking the part of a dancer is
easy. Stage make-up (check), costume, sort of intact (check), hair did (check),
but actually finding the passion and letting it resonate through you and onto
the audience, that’s something not everyone has. Look, as a teacher, there is
only as much as I can teach and so much I can do to help draw passion out of my
students. I hope and assume that every teacher wants that moment where they
look out at their students and think, “Damn, I did it. I taught them that and
they learned it, remembered it, loved it and enjoyed it.” I had that moment. I
had that moment and I could not stop feeling as if I was on top of the world
for it. I am so proud of each and every students’ performance and I am so
incredibly proud of my group. It’s not easy to hear instruction in English and
dance to music in a completely different language you’ve never heard before,
but my ladies did it. We were on point, we were strong and passionate and there
is nothing more that I could have asked from them. They came and they
delivered.
The other day, a great friend of
mine said to me: “What will you do to make your time in China fruitful? If you
look back in 10 years, you don’t want to feel like you wasted your time.”
Teaching about my culture (American and Indian), really working hard towards
something with my students, learning from them as they learn from me, is not
only my something fruitful, but it’s
my something unforgettable. Most
importantly, I have come to recognize myself in the reflections of my students.
I keep saying to myself, “I can’t believe I just choreographed that dance. I
can’t believe I danced like that.” You know what, I do believe it-I knew I was
capable of this all along, I just never had the opportune time to bring it out
into the open. I am so grateful that “Wonderful Night” allowed me to do it.
Daniel has handed the “Wonderful
Night” torch to me for next year. He has truly become a part of my experience
here in the best of ways. Hopefully with continuous support from my new staff,
I can help make the beat of the drum go on…
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