JOIN USEast West Public School recently celebrated their Annual Day at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, where close to 800 students participated in various cultural performances over the day. Unlike previous celebrations, this year’s activities revolved around creating awareness about several social issues.
“We always want our students to show their talents in a different way. It’s not just a fun event because they learn about issues like gender sensitivity, child labour and waste management, which are continuing today. The whole school has been preparing for it since December,” says Rashmi Kiran, secretary.
The morning session witnessed Shrusti, where the nursery children performed different dances adhering to the theme of environmental conservation, a cute sight for all visitors.
At the evening’s show called Rasavinyasa, the older lot presented their talents. In short, the idea was to showcase each of the nine emotions and accordingly, the performances revolved around laughter, love, anger, peace and so on. In bhakti rasa (devotion), for instance, the invocation song was followed by a bharatanatyam dance celebrating the birth of Ganesha.
In most of the dances of the evening, there were children of various age groups paired together, which was encouraging to see. The costumes and make up were also quite elaborate, giving the function a grander scale.
For shrungara rasa, or love, there was a group dance on Yeh Haseen Vaadiyan from Roja, which was beautifully choreographed and performed by the little children wearing white and red. Amid the cheers of the impressed audience, there were airlifts, somersaults and back flips done, as well as a snow machine to give it a romantic feel. Hasya rasa saw an action drill, where students enacted the lyrics of songs like O Saathi Re and Why This Kolaveri and seemed to be having a great time.
“As a parent, it’s nice to see your child having fun on stage and not being scared of it. The children are all very talented and it’s lovely to see them all smiling and dancing, singing or doing whatever they do best,” says Manisha, a parent.
Among other things, there was a skit on terrorism, a dance drama on female infanticide and a mime on the health hazards of mobile phones; a lot of dances were also seen — in styles like hip-hop, contemporary, Latin and fusion. The evening also saw winners of various school activities of the past year presented with awards.
“We used to practise for three hours a day and were all very excited to perform in front of our parents. It was really fun and I’ll never forget today,” wraps up Shrenik Jain, a sixth-grade student, who performed the soldier dance for the veera rasa (courage).