I am five years old in this memory. Autumn comes, and at my kindergarten, we practice for the upcoming sport festival. There are several performances and races planned, but the one I am most excited about is the dance I will be doing with all my peers of the same age.
The theme of this year’s sport festival is “dinosaurs.” In our dance performance, we will present ourselves as dinosaurs, wearing special costumes made of blue plastic bags and decorated with paper spikes on the back.
Our teachers have picked the music and come up with the choreography. We form lines and move our bodies to the music, while singing the song at the same time.
Not everybody is into this kind of activity. Some are shy, their movements reserved and their voices low. Others are okay with the idea of a dance performance. They move fine and sing fine. Then, there is me, who is totally into it and becomes a dinosaur the moment we line up to dance. Once the music starts, I extend my arms and legs to the fullest, sing at my top voice, and when we roar in the middle of the performance, I am ecstatic, feeling as if we were the coolest crowd of people on earth.
On the day of the sport festival, my movement and voice are off the chart due to the excitement of showing our performance to the audience. Later that day, my mother tells me how my performance stood out from everybody else.
“You were the only one who were trying hard to be a dinosaur,” she laughs. “Yes, I could hear your voice, and your movement was very convincing!”
The way she describes my dinosaur dance makes me feel like I have overdone my acting in the performance. That is slightly disturbing, but being so proud of my dinosaur dance, I decide to let it pass this time.