10th Cheonan World Dance Festival (1 – 9 October 2012)
For the second time, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) University Performing Arts Group (UPAG) participated in the 10th Cheonan World Dance Festival at Cheonan Samgeori Park, Cheonan City, Korea held from 1 to 9 October 2012.
UTP UPAG, which consists of 27 team members, received financial support of RM30,000.00 from the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE) and RM20,000.00 from Yayasan UTP for this prestigious annual cultural arts festival.
Themed ‘Let’s Dance in Cheonan,’ the festival was organised by Cheonan-si Cheonan Culture Enhancement Committee and supported by Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Korea.
The main aim of this festival was to encourage and educate the international community to appreciate international folk dance cultures. Participation came from various professional and national dance groups from 23 countries around the world. The participating countries were divided into two groups, group A and B. Group A were from the Netherlands, Russia (Khabarovsk), Argentina, France, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Czech, Indonesia, Slovakia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia (UTP UPAG) whilst Romania, Thailand, UK (Wales), Russia (Sakha), India, Poland, Costa Rica, Nepal, Philippines, Russia (Moscow) and Turkey were in Group B.
All groups were required to compete in 3 categories of performances during the festival namely the folk dance, street parade dance and including the newly introduced category, dancer contest award.
For the finals, only ten countries from the 23 countries were selected by the judges to perform during the closing night. UPAG were short listed as the top 10 to perform along with contestants from Argentina, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Romania, UK (Wales), Russia (Sakha), Poland, Costa Rica and Turkey.
UTP UPAG Malaysia was the only country winning all three categories in this dance competition - the Best Folk Dance Contest, Best Street Parade Award and Best Dancer Contest Award.
For the overall competition, UTP UPAG grabbed the fourth place and walked away with a cash prize of USD1200.00.
UTP UPAG had certainly benefited tremendously from this festival. They managed to establish a smart relationship and networking with professional cultural groups in the dance arena, and successfully promoted Malaysian traditional cultural performances at the international level. Their experience and exposure would certainly support UTP’s vision and mission to produce multi-talented and competitive graduates.
