By Grace Deng

SAS Pudong’s Prom Committee (PromCom) held the annual Fall Ball on Friday, November 9th—and while participants agreed the venue was beautiful, many students wished the dance included more dancing.

“The formal looked really aesthetic,” said PromCom member and sophomore Alicia Chen. “We think it went really well because the venue and decorations were great.” Prom Committee decorated the venue with white and blue LED lights and silver holographic streamers for the photo booth.

Chen added that she was happy the music worked this time, referencing the music mishap last year (“something about the aux cord”). While a student who wished to remain anonymous as she didn’t want Prom Committee to be angry at her agreed with Chen about the music, she, like many other Fall Ball participants, was unhappy about the general atmosphere. Many allege the atmosphere resulted in no one dancing.

“The dance mostly included freshman who didn’t dance at all,” she said. “All we did was stand around for two hours as PromCom people took photos of themselves.”

Underclassmen whose first high school dance was Fall Ball said the dance fell slightly short of their expectations.

“I think the venue was actually quite nice,” said one underclassman, who wished to remain anonymous because she didn’t want to be seen as a “hater.” “It just didn’t feel like a dance.”

The underclassman added that she “heard it wasn’t that good last year, and PromCom kept reassuring us that it was going to be fun this year.”

Chen acknowledged that one of PromCom’s challenges this year was getting more underclassman interested.

Another underclassman, Luke Cheung, said that while he agreed the venue was nice, he wished PromCom would try to improve the atmosphere of Fall Ball.

“I know a lot of people who kinda got bored pretty quickly and left the venue as a result,” Cheung said, comparing his experience to MYG Nite in middle school. “I would recommend to make the purpose of Fall Formal more of a school dance thingy.”

PromCom told Pudong Press that “obviously as a school dance, we’d hope that students are willing to pull out some dance moves at a social, but we have no control over whether or not students are dancing. There was music and the dance floor was set up nicely so next time we encourage students to be less shy and get out there!”