In the last week of Term 2, our team of 38 dancers took to the stage of the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre at the Aotea Centre to compete in the annual Showquest competition.
The performance was the culmination of two terms of hard work with one afternoon and two morning rehearsals each week. A big thank you to Mrs Singh for overseeing these. The dancers were supported on the day by the lighting team of Gladon Chua 13E2 and Bonnie Huang 12J5.
The students leading the team were Anita Cheng 13B7, Senushka Pillay 13K12, Eeva Running 13B7, and Saamiya Shankar 13J5. They created their theme for the performance, choreographed the dancers into a ten-minute routine, designed a costume look, cut the music, and created an accompanying video for the LED wall behind the dancers. With their title theme, Burnout: An Ember of Hope, our leaders explored the idea that life can often feel overwhelming and it can seem that everyone else is doing so much better than you. However, if you take a look, you’ll probably see that a lot of people are feeling the same way and, actually, you’re doing much better than you think you are. A special mention goes to our Lead Dancer, Amelia Irwin 11D3, as well as Pepper Jukes 10B1 and Paige McKechnie 12S4, who sang beautiful covers of Gilded Lily and Evergreen.
Mr Sequeira and I were very impressed by all our students and how well they handled the very long day, beginning at 8:45am and finishing at 10pm. The dancers were focused, rehearsed hard during the day, and handled the technical glitch with their music during rehearsals very well. Their performance in the evening show was stunning. Sadly, we did not place, but the team won four awards, taking away Best Choreography, Best Soundtrack, Best Theme, and Best Live Music.
We are incredibly proud of them.
~ Mrs McKenna, Head of Dance