Ulang Tahun SMAN 62 Jakarta

So I really have been to a lot of birthday's recently. This one was for my school's 30th birthday. They went all out - they apparently do every year. There were performances of all sorts, special guests, and even sponsors from stores and phone companies.
    I actually got to perform in my school's birthday. I did a traditional dance Tari Riau (from Riau) with my school's dance club. We have been studying for a while just so we could do this one show. So I arrived at 5 am and went straight into doing hair, makeup, and putting on the amazing costume. It included pants, a red tunic type shirt, a collar, a short piece of fabric around the waist secured by belt, and then the sarung we danced with. In our hair was one centered headpiece, a flower on one side, a chime type ornament on the other, and garlands of flowers hanging from the back.

Our group with our dance teacher

    Before we went on there was a group of traditional religious drummers and a lot of introduction. We were the first dance performance. When we finally got on stage the announcer asked me a couple of questions because well because I'm the foreigner in the school. It was a pretty good performance. There were a lot of cheers from the audience. There were a couple of mistakes - I know I made one really noticeable one but that is how dance performances go.

After our dance I was actually interviewed by two guys for some type of school media thing. Then was the complicated job of getting all the makeup and costumes off. The makeup was really hard to take off and in the end I had a ring of light colored makeup still along my hairline. The price of dancing a traditional dance where they use lots of makeup to make your skin lighter.
Then I was able to watch. There was an accapella group, the school's choir, a teacher student band. That's what the video is below.

This video is the acapella group

Tari Saman also performed and was great. I have so much respect for them as dancers. It's all from a sitting position but they have to move into different formations, the actual performance is 10 minutes and they have to sing.

Me with Tari Saman dancers

 There were 2 dance groups specializing in shuffling that performed.

This video is of the school's choir singing part of the national anthem Indonesia Raya. It's very long - I know only a few words.

Then beside student performances there were gift give aways - from the sponsers. There was a guest artist - Adera I believe. Everyone turned fangirlish and ran up and sat under the stage as he played his guitar and sang love songs. . .

Because music's so big in our school each grade had a band that played too.

12th grade

10th

Then to end the very long event a reggae group Solja performed. Apparently the dancing went until 5 or 6 pm. I left to go home earlier because my family had other plans.

I absolutely loved this event and it puts any birthday celebration my american school has had to shame. I think they could learn a lesson from the awesomeness that is SMAN 62 Jakarta.