The Final Shabang

We had our final cultural exchange in China on Friday. We spent all day rehearsing, lighting, and spacing on the stage that we were performing on! It was fun to be on a stage instead of cramped in a small room with fold out chairs. They even had fog machines that they ended up using at their own will during the performance. At one point, I don't think I was even seen because I was dancing in a cloud of maple-smelling fog. This was the most real of a performance we have had. We performed first, then the University of Illinois, who had a few theater kids touring China, sang some songs, then the Mongolians did some pretty awesome things, including Beijing Opera!

It was especially fun for us because the school loaned us some of their costumes to wear for our traditional folk pieces. The major problem was that none of us really fit into their costumes--Americans are built a little bigger than Chinese. So we resorted to bits and pieces. We had a Tibetan costumes, which included rasta wigs


and we had Mongolian costumes.

Can you tell in these pictures how tired we all are? We are ready to come home. But it was a great show to end the trip. Oh, and we played the bamboo flute. We thought it was terrible, and I swear I heard people in the audience chuckling, but all the Chinese professors said it was very touching.