ACT - ISD 28th Foundation Day

     Yesterday – September 17. 2016, Saturday, was the 28^th 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.