Raffles Modern Dance is a tightly-knit CCA that never fails to inculcate the love for dancing in its members. It has a warm atmosphere with every dancer playing a vital role in the team. In Modern Dance, the dancers are exposed to the unique style of their resident instructor, Low Mei Yoke. Madam Low prepares the dancers for important events such as the biennial Singapore Youth Festival (SYF), as well as, major school events such as Raffles Rhapsody. Weekly trainings and self-improvisation classes constantly improve the technicality of the dancers. Furthermore, the dancers are given a chance to choreograph their own dance pieces during non-SYF performances. This allows them to explore their fullest potential and creativity.

There are numerous opportunities for Modern Dance to perform each year and these platforms serve as a great way for the dancers to improve their stage presence. In 2013, we took part in the Singapore Youth Festival and attained a Distinction for our item titled ‘In or Out’. Other performances include in-house events such as Open House and Take 5.

During term time, Modern Dance meets twice a week, on Mondays (4.00 – 6.00) and Wednesdays (3.00 – 6.00), for a total of about 5 hours. However, nearing the time of performances, trainings may increase to three times a week and trainings may be extended. During the holidays, trainings will be conducted during the earlier half of the holiday.

Modern Dance requires auditions and the selection process consists of two stages. The first stage requires participants to learn a set of choreography and the second stage to improvise according to any music played. However, participants may be asked to prepare a short routine as well. Selection into Modern Dance is based on the participants’ ability to learn quickly and their overall performance.

Apart from gaining performing experiences, the dancers will learn an important element in Modern Dance – chemistry. Modern Dance comprises movements that are interdependent between dancers. It focuses on expression and emotion. To foster inter and intra batch bonding, Modern Dance also has outings throughout the year, for instance to watch dance performances together. We are also planning to have a bonding camp in April.

As Martha Graham once said, “Dance is the hidden language of the soul”, Raffles Modern Dance is truly a CCA that allows its dancers to push beyond their limits and mature into even greater dancers.

Club Automatica

Club Automatica is just the place you’d want to be if you enjoy either manipulating Physics theories or playing with technology.

We are formed by 2 divisions – Quanta, which deals with Physics, and robotica, dealing with robotics applications.

Club Vision
“To nurture a group of passionate, skilled students able to push boundaries in robotics and Physics through creativity and innovation”

ROBOTICA

In Robotica, we deal with all things electrical and mechanical. We use different platforms to build our own wonderful creations. From simple kits like Lego NXT (yes, the plastic blocks brand, but much much cooler stuff, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0-hmiCIShE) and VEX (for larger, metal robots) to more adventurous ones like the open sourced Arduino as well as propietary systems such as Joinmax! However, the club is not just about what we do, it’s more about how we do it. Innovation and creativity are indispensable in our arsenal of tools. In a sea of indistinguishable mechanical contraptions, we strive for the beautiful solution, poised as the guiding light for the robotics scene worldwide.

Our training sessions are fully student-run. But don’t worry, we have adequate qualification and experience, having been through up to 8 years of robotics competitions nationally and internationally. However, our individual brilliance would count for nothing if we didn’t share. Thankfully, sharing is one of our favourite activities (making robots come first). By teaching one another, as well as our juniors (through RARE, an initiative for Y5-6s to teach our Y1-4 juniors), and sharing with whoever wants to listen through our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Club-Automatica/325436347581930). This way, we can pass on the knowledge and passion that we have for Robotics to our fellow enthusiasts personally!

Of course, we apply these skills in the plethora of competitions we take part in such as Robocup Singapore Open & National Junior Robotics Competition. This way, we are able to pit our skills against others and expose ourselves to a variety of solutions.

1) RoboCupJunior Singapore – Awards:
1st for Dance Challenge – Individual Team Secondary
1st for Dance Challenge – Super Team
1st for Soccer Challenge – Soccer Open League Individual Team (here’s a link to the videos of the finals where we beat ACSI 18-1 first half: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=945JS0hvFzA, second half: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxDzak2tu3g&feature=c4-overview&list=UU7DpTAK4xH0-Mq9bNsVJTEQ)
Best Achievement Award

2) NJRC – Awards:
2nd for Best Research
3rd for Entrepreneurship award
Distinction Award – tertiary category

If you’ve got the interest, then that’s all we need! No prior experience is needed at all. As a close-knit bunch of robotics enthusiasts, we’d gladly guide you from lost soul to at least good enough to build and program a simple robot (personal commitment and enthusiasm is definitely a plus point to have to be good).

If you already have the experience though, why not join like-minded people like us to further your skills and try out new ideas! Who knows, you could be the next Dean Kamen Kenneth Chow (chairman, kenneth_chw@yahoo.com.sg).

In 2013, we had our division sessions every Wednesday, 2.30-4.30. This coming year however, the training day and timing are subject to change, based on our members’ availability. We’re extremely flexible about it as we believe that it would be a waste to lose out on our exciting sessions only due to schedule conflicts.

Fact of the day: All our members have won at least one first placing trophy in a competition this year, definitely an added incentive to join us.

By Ho Xiu Lun and Joelle Chong

Picture this. The lines are drawn and the stands are filled. You smell the grass and feel the sun fuel you. “Play ball.” The crowd roars as you step up to bat and this is when the adrenaline kicks in. With a triumphant swing, you send the ball soaring through the sky and clinch the victory by bringing home the winning run. This is softball.

We play for the (g)love of the game, training three times a week under Mr Nelson Lim, our wise and experienced coach. Our coach has been with us for over 20 years, training countless batches of champions. Year after year, Raffles Softball has performed remarkably, with the ‘A’ Division Boys defending their title for the past three years, and the ‘A’ Division Girls bringing home the title the year before and coming in third runners up last year.

You can also expect various exciting overseas training opportunities to countries like Thailand, Australia, Malaysia and beyond. Not only so, annual tournaments such as the SRC-SBSA Softball Carnival and AIA-SBSA Kallang Softball Open provide us with ample opportunity to hone our skills and bring us closer together as a unit.

In Softball, you’ll find in your team mates a second family, one who shares the same passion as you and will always have your back. Our teachers-in-charge are one of the most dedicated around and so is the softball alumni who spares no effort to go the extra mile, sacrificing their time to assist us during training.

If you have any experience playing softball or are interested in picking up the sport, we welcome you to be part of our softball family!

Softball: Where the good steal.

Automatica

Club Automatica is just the place you’d want to be if you enjoy either manipulating Physics theories or playing with technology. We are formed by 2 divisions – Quanta, which deals with Physics, and Robotica, dealing with robotics applications.

Club Vision
“To nurture a group of passionate, skilled students able to push boundaries in robotics and Physics through creativity and innovation”

Quanta

Seeking to acquire the fundamental grasp of our world and how it works and revolves (pun intended), Quanta aims to delve deeper into the vast and electrifying world of Physics. Quanta is a division of Club Automatica.

From the knowledge of something as fundamental as an apple dropping to the ground through gravity to the exploration of the abstract world of quantum mechanics, Quanta explores various concepts through interactive discussions and sharings. For those who share a passion of exploring Physics deeper and learning more about anything and everything related to Physics, Quanta is the place for you. Quanta sessions are usually held once a week, with sharings often occurring by any member who is keen to share his/her thoughts about something which he/she read and found interesting, some of our quirkier sessions include the investigation of the Physics behind the Spiderman scene where he stops a train using 2 thick strands of web, quantum mechanics and the physics of a ball in motion (and not just projectile motion or Stokes’ Law while we’re at it).

Quanta is multidimensional (again pun intended), we also have demonstrations and setups of interesting phenomena, such as soon-to-be-held/recently held JIP workshop on non-Newtonian fluids and our very own Tesla Coil. Currently, we also intend to construct features such as simple ballistic mechanisms. Building these devices is no mean feat, coming up with such devices requires a fair amount of creativity and innovation, and we intend to increase appreciation of Physics’ phenomena through these interactive displays.

We also aim to connect aspiring students with the Singapore Young Physicists’ Tournament (SYPT), a competition where students from across Singapore would duke out their knowledge on Physics problems in debates known as “Physics Fights”. Presentations of past participants and knowledge on the tournament would give prospective students some knowledge as to what to expect in the qualification later towards the end of the year.

So who can join us at Quanta? Anyone and everyone who has an interest in exploring the fundamentals of the world around us are welcome to join. You need not be a Physics students, just a desire to learn will be perfect.

Ultimately, Quanta want to show you that Physics is not an insurmountably daunting subject riddled with nefarious Greek letters, but rather a subject that explores the fundamental principles of the world around us. This exploration we cannot promise will be easy, but it definitely will be fun, enriching and intriguing. We learn fundamental principles governing our world, from the vast expanses of our universe to the smallest of subatomic particles. We learn Physics.

For more information, feel free to contact Kartik (Quanta Chairperson) at kartikbalodi@yahoo.com.sg or 97816553.

Who are we? Well, we’re just a group of sixteen girls who love to dance, and found the answer to that passion here in Chinese Dance. With its elegance, energy, and mix of traditional, contemporary and folk elements, Chinese Dance is indeed one of a kind as an art form – and one very close to all of our hearts.

Under the guidance of Madam Chen Lili, our team meets twice a week in the multi-purpose studio to dance our hearts out. To us, dance is not a hobby but a passion, not a skill but an integral part of our lives. Our team mates are not just fellow dancers, but family members – and one of our greatest joys is to perform together.

What have we done this year? Our seniors, along with a few of the dancers in our batch trained long and hard and did the school proud by clinching Distinction at the Singapore Youth Festival (SYF) Arts Presentation earlier this year! They presented a beautiful remake of a much-loved old piece choreographed for the SYF Central Judging back in 2007. While the SYF team was preparing for the presentation, the rest of us were hard at work practicing for our first performance as a batch at the Global Alliance of Leading Edge Schools. Our team faced many challenges during this period of time as we come from a diversity of backgrounds – from gymnastics, to ballet, to ethnic dance, to contemporary dance – and this made it difficult to synchronise our styles into a single, cohesive piece. Furthermore, the personality of the dance we had chosen was new to many of us. However, our common love for dance, the tireless perseverance of every member and the patient guidance of our instructress enabled us to put up a performance we could be proud of in the end.

What’s up next? We definitely aren’t stopping here! Right now, our team is in preparation for a performance at Boon Lay countdown. The piece is a timeless classic choreographed by our instructress to a popular song by Jay Chou, and we certainly hope to live up to its reputation and her expectations! Also look out for us at Take 5 and Dance week later next year, where we will be showcasing a variety of dances ranging from contemporary to folk Chinese dance.

More than performance opportunities, we hope to continue to bond as a team, as a Chinese Dance family, and grow both as dancers and people through our journey together as a batch of dancers. We hope that you will enjoy our heartfelt performances, and continue to support us!