A Season of Grand Finales

NYU Shanghai brought the semester to a close with a flurry of shows capturing student talent in its many creative forms. From bilingual songs and business pitches to the much-anticipated projects of IMA, the end-of-semester shows on campus revealed the immense diversity and effort of all.

Atypical for a Friday night on campus, the auditorium was brimming with “Unity,” and “Seasons of Love” among other songs on December 2, where 43 members of the NYU Shanghai Chorale encircled the community with songs in Chinese and English.

Many visitors piled into the NYU Shanghai Gallery for to browse video installations, ink paintings, and unique captures of Shanghai through photographs produced by the students of Prof. Barbara Edelstein and Prof. Jianjun Zhang’s art classes  (Introduction to Studio Art, Introduction to Photography and Projects in Studio Art).

Students from English for Academic Purposes (EAP) on December 12 showcased their skills acquired over the semester that pushed them to create business pitches, video presentations and posters.

“The real reason for the show is giving students the chance to practice their public speaking. It’s a challenge in itself just to stand up in front of a group like this and to present,” said Associate Director, English for Academic Purposes and Lecturer Brandon Conlon.

After 14 weeks of training and creative improvisation on solos, duets and group work, the Dance Class, Choreography & Performance class, NYUSH Chorale, and the Body Voice representatives performed Sink Back into the Ocean on December 13.

“In the deepest parts of the ocean, you have to rely on your own sense of self to move around. One of the main messages of this performance is to forget about being so locked to our current dependencies like cellphones, and go back to something that is deep within us,” commented participant Mark West ‘17.

At the same time, the IMA show generated tangible excitement for presenting students and spectators alike. Professor Matthew Belanger, Associate Director of IMA, said students have displayed great enthusiasm to prepare this semester’s final show, and that new projects kept flowing in, even 10 minutes before the show started.

One of the many highlights was a VR project by Baaria Ahmad Chaudhary ‘17 called “The Last Star System,” an exploratory experience of galaxies made up of mundane, surrealist objects. She was hoping to build VR software for the education industry in the future. “This was the semester that inspired us to take on projects bigger than anything we’ve done before,” she said.

Having grown 20 percent since the previous year in terms of enrollment and majors, IMA continues to expand, preparing students to think critically and solve problems while empowering them to creatively tackle substantial global challenges in the future. “IMA is now mature enough, old enough that it can start to walk on its own,” Belanger concluded.

See a video roundup of all shows here