Macleans College has struck gold at Aotearoa’s biggest performing arts competition.
On July 1 students danced spectacularly at the ASB Aotea Theatre in front of thousands of spectators and four dance industry experts – earning the Best Chorography Award and Most
Effective Use of Live Music at the prestigious competition, ShowQuest.
Showquest is a performing arts platform for schools produced by Rockquest Promotions.
The preparation for the live dancing started with auditions during term one.
Then the selected crew of 33 dancers took two terms to perfect their seven-minute performance.
The announcement of the lockdown earlier in the year came both as a challenge and as an idea inspiration – for the theme of their dance was the ramifications of Covid-19.
The choreographers, Jasmine Jones (Rutherford House), Hannah Giles (Snell), Tamika Te Young (Batten) and Diya Matta (Snell), “took on the challenge of incorporating aspects of dance and drama in their performance to captivate the audience on issues specific to the global pandemic”.
Groups split up into different styles of dance to show the various impacts of Covid-19.
Te Young choreographed the contemporary section which highlighted the effects of mental health and showcased the vocal talent of Lexie Buchanan (Upham) – the focus and star of their Most Effective Use of Live Music award.
Matta and Giles choregraphed the hip-hop section which demonstrated the economic impact of unemployment during the pandemic. Jones’s Jazz section displayed the effects of the global death tolls.
In the climax of their dance, they presented a united front to show how society “came together in hard times to overcome extreme obstacles”.
This earned them their win in the Best Choreography category.
“It was a great achievement for the school especially since the group consisted mainly of junior dancers,” Macleans says.
The result qualifies the students for the Showquest Nationals.
