Graduation season is marked by tears, smiles, triumphs and farewells. For graduates from Wuhan University, they have spent a beautiful time in this green campus. For members of College Dancing Troupe, their youth is like a ballet. In the dance studio, they circle past summers and winters, past four years.
To celebrate their graduation, College Dancing Troupe held a ball at Meiyuan Playground on Sunday night. At the ball, members presented all audiences a visual feast through various dances.
Accompanied by a background video, which introduced the big family, played on screen, nine vibrant girls in tight dresses danced to rock music, warming up the whole playground. After the opening dance, a female voice-over told a long story about growth, youth and members of this troupe .
The beginning was usually the hardest. At the run-in period, team members tend to make mistakes and ruin the whole play. In the ballet My Partners, these ballerinas used a humorous method to show how clumsy they were at their first dance. A series of ensuing mistakes showed beginners’ immaturity and drew hoots of laughter. Four years’ hard training metamorphosed those inexperience girls into excellent dancers. In the ballet Swan, a demure swan was roaming with graces under the cover of night. In the fan dance The beauty, dancers were dainty lotus blossoming in the pond.
Dancing is a combination of strength and softness. The Totem exhibited the masculine facet of dance—they crawled forward and craned their necks on the stage, imitating wolf howling. While the Chinese classical dance Taoyao was a portrait of coy unmarried girls who twisted their willow waists. The two dances blended and matched, displaying different facets of Chinese dances.
Chinese ethnic minorities were accomplished and versatile. In The Beautiful Mt.A Li Chinese Korean there were cheerful drumroll; Unmarried Dai girls expected their future-husbands and twirled happily in Shao Duoli; Chinese Mongolian men stretched out their arms and strode as if they were in Nadam Fair. Dancers exuded an air of raw, vibrant masculinity; Uygur girls presented warm toast dance, like crimson flowers......
In the last part of the ball, dancers poured out their love and affection to partners, members, the troupe and Wuhan University. Unlike the delicate feelings of girls’, the boys preserved toughness, just vented in Brothers and swore that they would be brothers forever. Don’t Say Goodbye was grads’ last dance. They wore trencher caps and gowns; they left the university; they couldn’t help looking back at the campus; they had to start a new voyage...At the close of the party, a dancer rushed to the front stage and belted out,” I’ve graduated from Wuhan University now!”
Zheng Haoyuan, from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, was the leading dancer in Red Heroes. Since the beginning of his college time, he was closely involved in the College Dancing Troupe.” I’m going to study abroad for the next several years. Four years in our team not only enhanced my skills but enriched my life.”
After the graduation party, these graduates are going to work out a fortune for and by themselves. No matter where you are or what you do, you can always find your shelter in Wuhan University—your forever home.
(Photo by Guo Yutong, edited by Liu Yinglun, Mark & Hu Sijia)
