Yesterday – September 17. 2016, Saturday, was the 28th
foundation day of Asian College of Technology. Although I’ve been enrolled to
ACT since grade 7 only, so far I knew that we celebrate it by performing dances
with our batch mates; in this school year’s case, is with a combination of the
grade 10. And this was called the field demonstration, or field demo for short.
Each year had different themes for us to show, and this year
had different festivals around the Philippines as the theme. What I know is that field demo, unlike the
intramurals’ Dance Palabas, mainly focuses more on the props than the dance
itself. Different grades performed and showed to everyone how much effort they’ve
put into the props and to the dance. Our dance was Kaumaan, a festival that was
dedicated to the farmers. Our props had corns and banana leaves as the main
design. I’ve seen how much effort the props-men gave after I saw how hard they’ve
cut out chip boards, pasted them together, glued the cartolina’s, along with
their effort of finding ways on how to make the corns and banana leaves stand
properly using nylon thread and the
bamboo sticks. If it weren’t for the props-men, I honestly think our
performance wouldn’t be as good as what we’ve showed to the audience yesterday.
We’ve ended the whole field demo with a finale of everyone
dancing the Fly High. What I’ve learned from our field demo performance
preparations, was that practice really pays off when we perform it in the final
stage, and how we can’t really get everything done alone, but with a help from one another. Sure, props-men and the
dancers had different assigned tasks, but our efforts put together really paid
off in the end. Although we probably had some unnoticed mistakes with the
choreography here and there on the final performance, what counted was that we showed
to everyone what we could do.
The foundation day didn’t end with only the Field Demo
though. After going home as soon as the finale finished, we had to go back to
Pardo church for the Pardo night. What was supposed to be held outside, had to
be moved to the gym due to the rain.
Pardo Night is also held every year on the same venue, but
like field demo, this came with different themes. But unlike field demo, only
the chosen performers from different levels were to perform during this activity.
Like usual, the Pardo night started with an opening prayer, followed by the
singing og the Philippines National Anthem. This year’s theme was
“Circle of
Life”. Different performers (usually
dancers and singers) presented their understanding with the circle of life.
Some showed it with interpretative dance, while others sang songs that was
related to the song. In between those performances, some also had performed
presentations that wasn’t entirely related to the whole theme. Although this
was only inserted in order to buy time for the upcoming performers. many liked
what they have sung. From our batch we had the performance of “Paglaum” from
the IX- Prudence. Their performance had a message to every youth these days;
they showed how some did not care about school, how some used drugs, and how
some are doing great crimes that leads them with no bright future. The whole
performance ends with a priest helping each of them with their issues, and
everyone stopped as soon as they were aware of their mistakes.
Pardo Night has showed to most of us students that our
parents really are supportive. This was also a good chance for the students to
show that they are talented in many ways. Both field demo and Pardo night was a
good chance to show them what we’ve got, and it also taught me that with great
effort comes great finale’s. I really hope that we (students, teachers and
parents alike) continue to support one another in order to give and show to the audience, and the whole school, our best shot.
