Great Eastern Dinner & Dance 2008 (4 Oct 2008)

Great Eastern's Dinner & Dance 2008 was held on 4 October. Many many months of hard work has gone into it, to make this event a spectacular and memorable one. It was all the more important because this is the year that GE is celebrating its 100th anniversary. That's a really long history and not an easy one to achieve. :)

But this D&D will be unforgettable for me because I am performing in it. :) My friends and I got together to come up with a grand opening dance act as well as a competition dance for the talent show segment. For the opening act, we combined Elva Hsiao's 爱的主打歌 and Janet Jackson's Feedback. For the competition act, we used Lee Hyori's Toc Toc Toc.

It all started off in late July, when we first got together to start practising for the opening act with only Feedback. But the music was only 1 m 15 s long, and we thought it was way too short to make any significant impact on the audience. So we decided to add another song to it, and started to use Hyori's music. For Hyori, we basically looked up YouTube and copied the dance steps from her music videos and live stage performances!!! It was really challenging and most of the hardwork was done by my friend where she had to learn the steps from the videos available online! All I had to do was to learn the steps. :P Though, I did do the 'DJ-ing' by cutting and piecing the music together. :)

We practiced at least 1-2 times a week just to get our moves right and to make sure that we were synchronised. We then showed our dance to the HR director for his 'approval' around end August, and I think he was (very) impressed. :) He suggested that we join the dance competition that they intend to hold as part of the evening's entertainment. The talent competition was to be called "Then A Staff... Now A Star!". :P

So work began on finding a suitable piece of music for the competition. We then decided that we should use Hyori for the competition and leave Feedback for the opening act. For one, the Hyori dance is much more provocative and would probably help garner more votes... ;) [Yes, the competition results are based on 50% SMS votes and 50% on judges. Hehe... something like So You Think You Can Dance or American Idol huh? ;P]

Another month of serious practice began and it was challenging to balance dance practice with studying for the actuarial exams. On top of that, we decided to beef up the opening act with another piece of music which involves some singing and background dancers (ie Elva's song). We basically did that in the final 2 weeks leading up to the D&D!! Those 2 weeks were intense as we decided to get 2 other guys to join us! Luckily exams were over by then. :P

Finally we were in the last week before the D&D. We had 2 full dress rehearsals in that week and that was really exhausting. There were 6 singing acts and 5 dance acts for the competition. (I was amazed at the response for the talent contest! The level of gung-ho-ness and enthusiasm showed by the GE staff was overwhelming. It was really great to see how involved and sporting the staff are. It was really really inspiring...) By the end of the second rehearsal, I was so tired and sick of the dance that I just wanted it to be over and done with!! I've been practising these dances for more than 2 months already (especially Feedback!), so much so that I could literally do it in my sleep!!

And then the morning of the D&D arrived... We were there by 10:30am for last round of rehearsals as this was the first time we've seen the stage. Some last minute changes had to be made coz the stage was smaller than we expected. But that didn't really bother us much. Rehearsals ran on till around 2:30pm (damn tired by then!!) and off we went to one of the reserved hotel rooms to rest a little and also to start preparing for the night. As we were in the opening act, we had to be ready for the event by 5pm at the ballroom. That didn't leave us much time to rest at all!! The few hours we had were spent taking shower, getting into our costumes and putting on our make-up!!! Hahaha...

Now I know how tiring those talent show contestants feel! And I would do it again in a heart beat. :)

The event finally began around 6:45pm. I was really nervous, as usual. No matter how many times I've been on stage, the nerves never go away. We did our opening act (Elva + Feedback)... and I must say, it was an absolute hit (especially when we removed our jackets at the end of Elva's song and started on Feedback... hehe...)!!! :P

We then had some time to rest and enjoy our dinner before we had to get ready for the competition at around 8:30pm. So it was good that I at least got to enjoy the D&D and was not just pre-occupied with the performance. :)

But by 9pm, we were itching to get on with our performance. :) By then, I was no longer nervous, and was just excited and couldn't wait to get on stage to do our stuff!!! It was really amazing the moment we got on stage when the audience started to cheer and clap! I was overwhelmed coz I didn't realise we had so many supporters!!! (Hmm... maybe it was our sexy costume... :P) The music started, and we did our very best, and I must say, it was the best performance we've ever done! When I reviewed our performance on the camera recording, we were really giving it our all and we were so 'together'!! Haha...

Towards the end of the evening, all the contestants were called to the stage for the announcement of the competition results. When it came to the dance segment, we nervously awaited the results. We thought we definitely did well enough to win, but was not sure how the SMS voting would go. As we all know, SMS voting is a popularity vote and the other teams may have many loyal supporters regardless of the quality of the performance. But as it turned out... we had nothing to worry about, as we were pronounced the WINNER!! YEAH!!! We were sooooo ecstatic!!!! :D (The winning group gets $1k, by the way! Hahaha...)

All in all, it was a most fantastic night! :) It'll definitely be a night I will remember for life! (And if my memory fails me, I'll have the videos and photos to remember it by! :P)

I can't wait for next year's D&D and to do it all over again! ;)