At the beginning of December, a Chinese colleague, whom I had never met before, came to my desk and asked if I would like to be part of the entertainment for our annual Chinese New Year company banquet. It is standard practice in China for all companies to pay for a large banquet for all their staff to celebrate the New Year and throughout the meal members of staff provide entertainment. He had been informed that I would probably be willing as I was 'fun, energetic and enthusiastic'!! This flattery was enough for me to be drawn in and I found myself agreeing to be part of a dance group, which I assumed meant I would just have to get up on stage, do a silly dance and that would be that.
On the day we went over to reherse on the stage and then got ready, there was talk of make up, but I drew the line at that and just agreed to have my hair done, although I fear it was a little bit late to try and defend my manlyness now.
The theme of the banquet was national dress, so not knowing quite what to do for England, I went with a suit, and a comedy England hat. Much to my surprise, given the spectacular outfits worn by many others, I later found myself up on stage having been nominated for best dressed male. Needless to say I did not win.
The time to dance had arrived and I suddenly realised that I was dancing in front of 600 people, many of whom could influence my career! Fortunately it went well, we didn't make any mistakes, even the on the shoulder lift and spin, and we got a big round of applause. We even got voted as joint first best act, but lost out on the prize as the person due to present the award decided to give it to the group who had done the communist dance and song!
Well I was partially right, there was a very good chance I would make a fool of myself, but it very quickly became apparent that most of the group were taking this very seriously. I was informed that every Thursday evening I would be trekking across Shanghai to a dance studio, where a proffessional dancer would be putting us through our paces foe three hours to learn a Latin dance routine. I was paired up with the tallest girl in the group and the eight of us started learning the routine. It did not seem too bad at first, the steps appeared fairly straight forward, right up to the point we got shown the first lift that we would be doing, suddenly I realised I might just as well have signed up to enter Strictly Come Dancing.
Six lessons and several lunch time sessions later, the week of the banquet had arrived and it was time to sort out our costumes, this can't be too bad I thought, once again wrong!! Heeled shoes, snug fitting trousers and a black sequined top with a v neck down to my stomach....Nice.
The theme of the banquet was national dress, so not knowing quite what to do for England, I went with a suit, and a comedy England hat. Much to my surprise, given the spectacular outfits worn by many others, I later found myself up on stage having been nominated for best dressed male. Needless to say I did not win.
The time to dance had arrived and I suddenly realised that I was dancing in front of 600 people, many of whom could influence my career! Fortunately it went well, we didn't make any mistakes, even the on the shoulder lift and spin, and we got a big round of applause. We even got voted as joint first best act, but lost out on the prize as the person due to present the award decided to give it to the group who had done the communist dance and song!
All in all it was a good evening, but I went away empty handed not even winning any of the lucky draw prizes, which, given there were 3 iPad2s and an iPhone4s on offer, was a bit dissapointing.
As thoughts turn to next years banquet, I think we might fly to New Zealand early!!!!!!!
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