UKQE 3001 ExCEL (Report 1)
On 28th September 2019, Mid-Autumn Festival Night is held at Tasek Ilmu UTMJB. The purpose of having this event is to promote Chinese traditional culture with UTM students. I, as a member of UTM Flying Dance Studio was invited to be one of the performers. Under UTM Flying Dance Studio, a lot of members joined and started their practices on schedule. My team and I set our free time as practice sessions, usually it will be after class to ensure that both academic and society were carried out equally. Everyone in my team gave their cooperation to join the training. Basically, this kind of event usually needed to do a lot of preparations before the D-day.
Before 2 weeks from the event, my team and I decided to learn the choreography after our class every day so that we could make the performance perfect for our audiences. Besides teaching them dance, I also joined other choreography as a dancer. Since Mid-Autumn Festival Night is organized to promote Chinese traditional culture, Chinese traditional dance is one of the highlights. We spent day and day, hour and hour to learn every single step of moves in order to match the tempo accurately. I taught them how to dance then sometimes they corrected my moves if I made mistakes. During training, all steps were taught and all the positions of dancers were well adjusted. Throughout the process, each of us learnt and gained from others to achieve our goals together.
As a person in-charge of one of the performance slots, I always make sure that my team could follow up what I taught and their steps were correct. Sometimes, I had to coordinate problems that were created, for example some dancers were hard to memorize the steps, then I had to change the steps into more easier or simpler ways. Other than that, clothing of performers and also transportation of performers were hot issues for the dancers because we were just students and most of us can’t afford to buy new clothes or have any vehicles in the campus. Therefore, I had to deal with all of these kinds of problems and provided my team members a good solution that would not burden them at the same time.
In order to make everything perfect, my team and I had recorded every practice that we had made. So that we can replay the video to see what is the problem with the performance and make a correction before getting the real performance. A rehearsal was carried out after two weeks of training. We went to the event venue and got ourselves to adapt with the stage. At the same time, we also needed to do facial expressions and also had to deal with nervousness while we were on the stage so that the performance would look more professional.
During the event, we performed the dance flawlessly and earned audiences’ cheers. After the slot, I also enjoyed some stations that were set which let participants enjoy and learn Chinese traditional culture, for example calligraphy, story-telling and also some mini-games. Besides that, a lot of food trucks sold food and drink on that festival night. Overall, this festival night should be held with other races together to give a chance to other races or foreigners to learn more about multiculturalism of Malaysia.
It was really my pleasure to be invited and had been selected as one of the persons in-charge to teach members who interested to perform on the Mid-Autumn Festival Night. I noticed that my team and I practised, sweated and also had our dinner together and at that moment this made me reminded of the phrase, “The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle ”. Of course, we did a good performance on that day after all these practices. I think this is a special experience for me because I involved myself in that situation as a teacher and also a student at the same time. This made me realize that cooperation between each other is always better than you did the thing individually. Since I had both side experience as a leader and also a member of a team, this kind of experience makes me feel connected to other people. In the same way, I also learnt the way to get along with people.
Actually, it was a very interesting experience to be one of the persons in-charge of the performance slot. Before that, I used to be a person who didn’t want to plan anything before doing something. After I was assigned as one of the people in-charge, I had to force myself to learn the whole choreography of the dance and familiarize myself with the music and tempo within 3 days, so that I can make sure everything was on schedule.
This action really develops myself into a more self-disciplined person. Throughout the preparation, I felt that I grew up with my teammates together and learned to share my happiness or positive thoughts with others instead of sharing their negatives during those two weeks. This is vital because a leader is the one who influences the team members, so the leader needs to be a good model for the team members. From this event, I did learn a lot when dealing with problems which happened in the team and made me grow then I realize that it is not that easy to lead a team. This makes me feel more appreciated with those leaders who had led me in any group works like assignments or projects.
I understand that nobody is perfect and I am glad that I have the opportunity to be the one who leads the team and at the same time, I feel grateful that I have met my team members who always give me support and cooperate with my instructions during the preparation. The most important thing is that they were giving me some advice when I met my bottleneck in teaching them and they also led me to find the way to solve my problems, this is because I had to memorize many choreography at that moment and I got confused or mixed them together. My teammates are considerate and thoughtful members. They knew I was under pressure at that time, so they did well at every practice in order to reduce the burden on my shoulder. Sometimes, they also point out some of my mistakes, so that I can correct them directly on the spot. I was quite satisfied with my team’s performance and I feel glad to be a team with my dancers. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to teach and also learn from them.
I have learnt that becoming a team leader is not that simple. As a leader, I need to be able to communicate with my team members in the effective way. For example, giving them clear instructions during the tutorial part. At the same time, this will build trust and relationships within my team. From this event, I realize that the responsibility of a leader is the main part for making sure my team is able to achieve the goal - PERFORM AN AWESOME PERFORMANCE. I arranged the time table of the practice time so that the progress was always on schedule. In order to let all of my team members get ready to perform in front of audiences, I also put a lot of effort to ensure my team members can have their best condition to perform at that event including helping them to borrow clothes for performance, arranged transportation and also helped them to make up.
No doubt that the cooperation of teammates is also as important as leadership. Team members always show me their support and learn the choreography properly. Even after the event has passed, they are still active in the chat room and wait for the next chance to dance together again. This makes me feel that bonding within the team is important and valuable as it can be exchanged into another form which is friendship. We become supporters and friends for each other after the event although we all are from different kinds of backgrounds.
In conclusion, I really did learn a lot throughout the whole process of preparation for this event. In addition, I think this memorable experience encouraged me to join more activities in my university life, make friends with others and have the courage to take the responsibility as a team leader. In the future, I think I will get myself involved and play different roles on committees, so that I will gain more experience on different positions and their responsibility respectively. Besides, I have also learnt the importance of self-discipline and I wish that I will improve or enhance my discipline by planning my time wisely and remove temptations, so that I can focus on the task that I have set and stop wasting time to wait for it to “feel right”.
Photo session:
The Chinese Traditional Dance on the stage Mid-Autumn Festival Night
(Me using the green mask)
Photo session with another performance team
(Me at the center of the picture)