Jewelle Tan Personally

Last night was the first time that Eu performed in public.

Her dance show with 12 of her classmates was part of last night’s program held in conjunction with His Majesty’s 62nd birthday celebration, together with at least 15 other numbers from her school ranging from the Kindergarten, Primary to Secondary classes.

Earlier in the week, we had a chicken pox scare which threatened to bring down at least 3 of the dancing troupe members (Eu included), but luckily the performance evening arrived with a perfect show time weather and all the children in high spirits.

Excited parents made-up their kids in full glamour - on top of their already extravagant costumes, which my mother in law claimed was a copy of costume from western China.

While I fixed Eu’s thankfully-long-enough hair myself, one mother confided that she sent her daughter to the saloon to have her hair fixed twice. Later as I was touching up on Eu’s lipstick, which she managed to lick clean along the 30 mins drive from home, another boy gleefully told me (with a wide grin and several missing teeth), “I also have lipstick!”.

For the record, he also had blusher, eye shadows and spiky-gelled hair full of glitters!

But although the weather was perfect and the kids were eager to perform - with none of them having last minute stage frights seeing the crowd - technical problems plagued their show.

Billed to be the first show, Eu and her friends only managed to appear as the 8th or 9th show - about an hour after their frazzled teacher finally returned from having rushed back to the school to resolve some problems. But although she arrived and they finally went on stage, luck was still not on their side.

In the end, Eu’s class “Drum Dance” was performed with NO MUSIC.

While the rest of the parents and myself were slightly disappointed that their show was performed in silence, it was heartwarming to see all the kids did their steps as if nothing was wrong.

All complete with smiling and happy faces.

To this I say kudos to their teacher who trained these children so well that there was no disorientation and no confusion. I was lucky to join them once for a full-dress rehearsal and they were the only class which rehearsed twice - and that to me was a clear show of dedication by their teacher. Glitches can happen to anyone but what differentiate an ordinary and exceptional troupe and trainer was what they are able to do when things did not go as planned - which they proved to us that night.

As they were leaving the stage, we could even forget that they had danced without music from their excited faces and exaggerated goodbye gestures.

It might not have been the ending to her first performance that we had envisioned, but Eu had fun, she was happy and it was obvious that she and her friends were very pleased with themselves.

As with the other parents, despite the unfortunate glitch, we are thankful that her teacher gave Eu this experience and we are indeed very proud of our daughter.