On Friday, November 20, Ms. Sandra Huang, Chinese 2, 4, and 5 teacher, held her 7^th annual Chinese talent to help students learn leadership, teamwork, and culture.

“I hope the students will be able to learn leadership by standing up and teaching the students who know less more. Dinner is also provided to help educate the students about proper table manners seen in our culture,” Huang said.

Senior Tiara Tanugraha, leader of the Bamboo Crew, was ecstatic to perform a dance she choreographed similar to tinikling, a performance that involves two people beating, tapping, and sliding bamboo poles on the ground and against each other in coordination with one or more dancers who step over and in between the poles in a dance.

“My freshman year, I did tinikling with FASA for BISA fest and when I got into Chinese 3, I heard that the annual talent show was a mandatory performance, so I got inspiration from what I did with FASA,” Tanugraha said. “I searched on YouTube for bamboo stick dances and I found that Taiwan had a similar traditional dance like the Filipino ones so I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to transition to.”

Tanugraha has been performing this dance for 3 years in the Chinese Talent Show, and this year, she wanted to change it up a bit to make it more special.

“I usually use the same song which is a traditional instrumental sort of thing, but since this is my senior year, I wanted to go out with a bang, so I was searching for song I actually like listening and dancing to and I came across this guy named Crowd Lu and I thought this song was really catchy and would be really fun to dance to.”

Tanugraha has put in a lot of effort into teaching her group the dance, and was ready to show it off.

“We usually practice every week afterschool, two days a week, and we practiced during class this week, so we’ve put in a lot of hours,” Tanugraha said.

After a month of practicing, Tanugraha is very proud of her group this and is thankful for the experience it provided, for all the hard work paid off.

“Every year, the group changes because some people leave Chinese and some people will start taking Chinese,” Tanugraha said. “This year, my group is very hardworking and it has become a big family. This has allowed me to grow closer to these people, and it was really fun putting on a show with a group of friends like them. I’m so proud of my bamboo crew!”

To celebrate all her students’ work and success, Ms. Sandra Huang provided an all you can eat dinner for the performers and their parents, but enforced dining etiquettes to show off their culture.

“During the dinner, elders are to get food before the students, to demonstrate good manners,” Ms. Huang said. “I’m am very proud of their work and am looking forward to planning the dance competition with the students in the spring semester.”