It's just 9 minutes.

It's just 9 minutes.

9 minutes of laughter, fun and teamwork on Friday, 16 May 2014 starting at 7:41pm, presenting an opening performance for 400 audiences during our Organisation’s Dinner & Dance in Compass Ballroom, Level B2, Convention Centre, Resort World Sentosa.

But this isn’t our usual 9 minutes. Lots of effort had been channelled into the preparation for the 9 minutes. The selection of the 3 songs for the medley, the changes after changes made to the choreography, the recording of demonstration video for the song signing and dance movements, the script writing, the planning and recording of the video to be screened on the actual day, the rehearsals, and the coordination of the sequences with about 60 persons across several centres all carried out within one and a half month. We even managed to make some last minute changes to the choreography due to on-site constraints.

The end result is simply and wonderfully great feeling seeing the surprise look from the audiences. When they thought that it's it, we managed to surprise them again and again, giving them wave after wave of excitements. I personally liked 4 segments of the entire performances that thrilled the audiences. First was the interruption to the usual countdown with a 2 minutes humorous video, teaching the audiences the Key Word Signs needed for the song signing subsequently. Then mid way through our first song "We go together" when the audience thought it was just a usual stage performance, the stage dancers interacted with the 8 dancers who suddenly appeared on the 2 big projector screens. The third excitement comes after the first song ended and when the audience started clapping thinking that it is the end. We surprised them with the beginning of our flash mob with 22 people walking out from within the audience and signed the chorus of "I just called to say I love you". Lastly, they were overwhelmed with 60 of us joining in to dance in the grand finale of “You can’t stop the beat!”.

This is definitely a fun and energetic moment for all of us! In my self-praised opinion, it was an awesome performance and I am delighted to be involved with the team of fun and committed people. It is also my first experience to be in the team, coordinating a flash mob for 60 people.

While I am full of praise to the team for a great effort (self-praise again, haha…), there were also lessons we should learn from this experience. (1) We need to use more contrasting colours in the video, to prevent the video having a wash out effect if we are unable to dim portions of the room's lights. (2) If we intend to have audience participation, it should not be done towards the end of the performance. We also need time to warm up the audiences.

Lastly, this post is intended for everybody that participated and/or contributed towards the fun, joy and success of this flash mob. It is equally important to dedicate this post to my daughter, 小tz who had watched all the video we produced over and over again during the one and a half month when I was helping to prepare for the flash mob. She had also been singing:

I just called to say I love you,I just called to say how much I care,I just called to say I love you,And I meant it from the bottom of my heart.

This will definitely form part of the great memory I had, and I would like to thank everybody for giving me that opportunity to try something new!

Photo: Part of the organizing team for the flash mob.