My dance troupe from Canberra Dance Development Centre (CDDC) went to China on 28 July for the Shanghai International Children’s Cultural and Arts Festival. This week long festival was for dancers aged 6 to 15 years. Our troupe had a great time performing, shopping and the occasional sight seeing. Troupes from all over the world shared their dance, music or drama routines with other countries. Our troupe was lucky enough to perform our dance routines on the same day as troupes from China, Japan and the Philippines. It was so fun and everyone in our troupe, including parents, had a ball. By the end of the routine, which went for twenty minutes, we were sweating our make-up off and we smelt really bad! Overall that day was one of the most enjoyable.

The day our troupe enjoyed the most was the closing ceremony for the Festival. We performed at this, and as soon as my troupe entered the stage, we were being cheered and whooped by the audience. That was the best night of the Festival by far! Also on the closing night, there was a Shanghai circus that performed. No cameras or video recordings were allowed to be used, not even for the news or TV.

Some things about the Festival were not quite as enjoyable as we expected though. The temperature over there was very hot, and compared to the Canberra weather, we were not used to wearing shorts, singlets and thongs! The food was mostly rice, but with a couple of strange looking meat dishes, which some of the troupe members weren’t brave enough to try. One person from another Australian group even got food poisoning! The markets over there were quite frightening but the adults were game enough to lead us through the dark alleyways to do some bargaining for copy designer bags.

The whole trip was terrific and I hope something like this will come up again! Believing we only spent two months practising it felt like years! The trip went by so fast, but the effort and time spent for it was worth it.

Hannah Wallace 7G