Seng Girls Dance into History in Qinghai – an article by Pema Lhamo (one of our Seng Girls)

We had a memorable and exciting dancing competition in DaWu, a big town in Qinghai during this summer holiday. It was a competition between six counties and we were the representative of Darlag, a county where our school is built. Having got such a valuable opportunity to show our school’s talents everybody in our school was very happy about it. Before going to DaWu, about 30 students of our school rehearsed in the square of Darlag for some days, and the day before we went to DaWu, we were all busy packing our stuffs for the big competition!

The government of Darlag was very supportive to our school that the functionaries drove us all the to DaWu in their own cars and when we finally arrived at night, they had already arranged hotels for us. It was quit late and we were all tired, so went to bed soon. Then during the following days, we got up early in the mornings and practice in a huge sports field where the competition was going to take place. By that time all other rivals had arrived as well, then we all practice each other’s performance all day long for 3 days.

Finally the main day had come and there were a large amount of people coming to watch the games with great excitements. We were much more surprised that day before the show had begun when we saw uncle Philip and his family (directors of LOVEQTRA) along with many other foreigners came to watch us performing far away from Xining, a city in Qinghai. At the beginning of the show, we were to perform our “horse dance” and while we were giving our show, the audiences shouted and clapped their hands with great enjoyments. Later that day, after the show had finished, anxiously we waited to hear the result. We were thrilled to learn we came in second place and of course, we jumped for joy when we heard the good news, because we knew that was a very important event for our school and plus, it was our first time to compete against five counties at a time in such a big game.

Captivating note: The event Pema talks about in this article has proved to be an important progression for the SGVTS program.  The school has now been officially recognized as the first GIRLS ONLY opera troupe approved to perform this special performance.  We are so excited for them and this development which, we hope, will open many doors of support for their work and program in the future.  Although they have always been in our minds, they are now, officially, famous.  🙂