Ikebana CCA
On December 9, the Ikebana Club of Suzhou Dulwich International High School held a small lecture "Why Ikebana?" in the evening at the school lecture theater, which attracted many students who are interested in to actively participate. This lecture was organized by Joe Zhou, Elaine Cao and Kristen Wang. It mainly introduced the history of Ikebana (flower arranging), flower arranging skills and art design about flower arranging.
Joe started the lecture with a vivid story: "it is said that long ago in Europe, a young man came to the rescue of his beloved girl with a sword. To show his love to that girl, he picked some wild flowers along the way and tied the flowers into beautiful bouquets and give them to the girl he loved. The girl accepted the boy's bouquet, then picked the most beautiful flowers and put them on the boy's chest. From then on, hand-holding flowers gradually become popular, and now people use it to express the love to others. This is the origin of the flower holder and the corsage. " After this, he kept on introducing the development of the oriental flower arrangement and the origin and spread of the western flower arrangement. Elaine Shared and taught some oriental and western flower arranging techniques. She not only made her own opinions on the basic shapes, colors and materials of flower paths, but also explained the basic "formula" of flower arranging. Kristen designed the poster and logo for this lecture, and explained the floral art to audiences and differences between Ikebana and traditional art aesthetics with enthusiasm: "art learnt in class is mostly in the form of 2-D, but floral art is the 3-D art in the real world." She also introduced the connections between them: how Chinese painting and flower arrangement relate to each other, and the beauty of flowers’ combination of formal beauty and beautiful case. In addition, she prepared a lot of examples to make it easier for audiences to understand the concepts, such as the lotus, "out of the mud without dye". What more attractive, and different from other academic drab serious speech was, three students used traditional Chinese crosstalk element when presenting the lecture, which had lots of humor and made the interpretation interesting and the theater full of laughter as well as made originally boring knowledge jump in front of audiences. The participants were able to learn things and get closer to Ikebana with the great fun.
At the end of the lecture there is a surprise session, that is the hands-on production session. Several students volunteered to participate in the creation, under the leadership of three little lecturers, the students completed a beautiful small Christmas tree together successfully.
After the lecture, one student Steven, who participated in the funny lecture, couldn't help to say, "I had learnt a lot from this Ikebana lecture and had a strong interest in Ikebana. I must join this club next term.” Another student, Yan, kept praising, “I had so much fun this time, and it was vivid and helpful. I think I’ve fell in love with Ikebana.”
