For those of you who do not know what annual day is, it's basically a day where all students perform(mostly dance) class wise. That day our school invites an honourable chief guest to watch all the programs. Our parents also come to see their children perform. Annual day is the most big, grand and awaited day of the year for all the teachers and students. However annual day is held only for students from class 1 to 9. I am currently in class 9, and hence this was my last annual day. Since it was the last annual day for all the 9th graders, at the end of the program there would be a special grand finale dance by all the 9th graders.
So, now I'm going to share my experience on how my last annual day went.
Annual day was held on 25th Jan 2023. the program started at 5pm in the evening. Since annual day was going to be held after 3 years(due to the lockdown and online classes) all the teachers, students and staff put their 100% in making it a grand program. And yes indeed, this year's annual day was so big and grand, never like this had we ever experienced such an annual day before.
So the sequence of the annual program was first the welcoming of the chief guest, speeches by our fathers and chief guest, prayer dance, opening dance and so on. My dance team and I (total of 12 girls) started to get ready the moment we reached our class because our performance was at the beginning. Well luckily we all got ready on time, got our makeup done and were all set for our dance performance. Our costume was a white, heavy anarkali with golden borders, along with that we had gold jewellery, a lot of makeup(especially thick eye makeup) and alta put on our feet and palm.
Now, here's the interesting part. We were performing a dance style called Kathak(classical dance form). All these years I always danced Bharatnatyam (another classical dance form) as I was a Bharatnatyam trained/learning dancer. Our dance teacher however put us for kathak dance, which I had never done before. Yet, I agreed to take part, firstly because it was something new, and I really wanted to do Kathak at least once in my life and secondly because Kathak dance originates from Uttar Pradesh. I am also from Uttar Pradesh, so this opportunity gave me an internal connection to definitely take part in.
My team and I had a dance performance at the beginning of the program(opening dance) and one more towards the end of the program(grand finale dance). At around 6:30pm we had our opening dance, towards the end of this dance, for the final pose, I was given the main lead to stand in the middle as I was representing bharat mata( my country India). Our opening dance went very well. After our first dance, we went back to our green room. From then on, we were allowed to meet our other friends, roam around. We even had a monitor set in the main hall of the building to watch the program.
During that time we had lots of fun talking, eating, playing and lots more. At around 8:45 we had our grand finale dance. And that was probably the best dance of the night. It went really very well. After our second dance was over, we got back to our rooms; changed our dress ASAP. The program was finally over and everyone went searching for their parents to pick them up. I took 15minutes searching for my family firstly because it was really dark(it was 9pm by then) and secondly because I was in another building and my parents were unaware that i would be in the main building and not the smaller building.
Luckily, I managed to find my parents. And then we were going to head towards our car, when I met one of my close friend and her parents, the next minute I saw my other close friend with her parents, and then even my other close friend appeared with her parents(we are a group of 4). It was such a coincidence. Our parents talked for a few minutes and then we all waved goodbye, heading back to our cars. When i sat inside my car, I was overjoyed when my father handed me a chicken roll which he had bought from the stalls put up for the annual day.( I did request my parents to get me something from the food stalls as students were not allowed to go to the food stalls)
The happy part was that I love the chicken rolls of my school and I really wanted to eat it since a long time. So as we headed home, I was enjoying my chicken roll and listening to the car radio music. We reached home by 10pm. My sister and i were really tired, so we went to sleep as soon as we reached home. P.s- I did have to put an ointment on my leg before going to sleep as I was having a terrible leg pain after the long day.
When I lay in my head with my soft, cosy blanket covering me, I was just recollecting all the fun tings that had happened today. I felt so good and then..zZzZz I went had gone to sleep.