Performing Arts

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2023, and welcome your input:

Penelope Lang (Performing Arts) penelope.lang@education.vic.gov.au 

Wominjeka!

Christmas Concert 

Our whole school Christmas concert will be held on our outdoor stage area on Thursday 7th December from 6.15pm to 7.45pm (approximately). Before the concert starts we will be opening the gym for the Art Show. Please come along (from 5.00pm) to see all of the beautiful art work that has been created by our students. We have sent home a FAQ information sheet for those families who have never attended one of our outdoor concerts before. Unfortunately, due to Covid and our stage being under scaffolding last year, we have not been able to use this space for some time. We are SUPER excited about celebrating the end of year with some singing, dancing, art, rock bands and maybe a sizzling sausage or two. Please see below for some costume requirements, for those who are able to assist. 

Some year levels have a ‘theme’ for their song and it would be great if you could support them by providing the following:

Foundation – Reindeer costume (or just the nose/antlers)

1s - just Christmas colours/dress ups

2s – they need a pair of sunglasses 

3/4s – they need to wear a pair of Christmas themed socks

5/6s – they are welcome to come dressed as a Christmas Elf

These items can just be added to any Christmas colours – gold, silver, red, green etc or their favourite Christmas dress up. The more colour, decorations and tinsel the merrier. 

If anyone has some BIG Christmas blow up decorations that we can use to decorate our stage please get in touch with me....and also some time to help me decorate the stage on Thursday 7th December. Thanking you in advance.

Junior and Senior Choir

Our junior and senior choirs have been singing together over the past few weeks (most Thursdays session 5) which has been a lot of fun. We have even been joined by Mrs Oakley, who has kindly taught the choir some signing to a beautiful song which will be revealed at the Christmas concert.  Unfortunately, many singers still have not brought a plastic display folder to choir (or any folder) and therefore they cannot collect the lyric sheets for our current songs. This is important as it allows them to rehearse at home. We will be making a special visit over to 3MDR radio station in a couple of weeks to record our voices in preparation for the Christmas concert.

Aus Music T-shirt Day

This year we will be celebrating 'Aus Music T-shirt Day' on Thursday 30th November. This is an annual day of fun and awareness to celebrate Aussie music and raise urgently-needed funds for music workers in crisis.  It is coordinated by the Australian charity  'Support Act'. You can log onto their webpage to read all about the amazing work that they do for Australian performing artists - https://supportact.org.au/about-support-act/ 

On this day, students are invited to bring a gold coin donation and wear an 'Aus Music T-shirt'. It can be an Australian band t-shirt or an Australian solo singer or even a t-shirt from a musical theatre show you have been to in Australia. 

I have done a little bit of research and it is actually quite tricky to find Australian 'Rock band' or music t-shirts in small sizes so please feel free to branch out to band t-shirts from other countries, a State Schools Spectacular t-shirt or students could even come dressed as their favourite character from a Disney musical. This will be a great conversation starter about the music/performing arts industry and the importance of social and emotional well-being and assisting people during tough times.

I am proud to say that this stemmed from a conversation with one of our school's Performing Arts captains, Shakked, who asked me about having a day to celebrate the 'power of music to make us feel better'. I hope you can join in with this important day....don't forget your gold coin please. 

In the Performing Arts room:

Foundation

The Foundation students have been very busy continuing to learn their choreography, song lyrics and melodies for the end of year Christmas concert. We have started to move away from the mirrors to see who can remember the dance steps without any prompting. On one of our sunny days, we headed outside to practise our dances on the stage. This was a lot of fun and most certainly helped to develop the student's spatial awareness and stagecraft skills. We are still working on following directional instructions such as step forward, step back, move to the side, as well as moving to their left and right. It was great to see them focus during the explanation and then completion of their semester two Portfolio Task and engage in some interesting conversations about singing songs in different languages. Don't forget to keep working on the Nutbush dance at home. I know there are multiple versions but our version sounds like this:

"tap to the right, tap to the right, tap to the left, tap to the left, tap to the back, tap to the back (right), tap to the back, tap to the back (left), knee up, knee up (right), knee up, knee up (left), flick (right) flick (left), out cross out together"

(said by Ms Lang over and over and over again - ha ha)

Year 1/2

The students in Year 1 and 2 have been continuing to learn the choreography and song lyrics for their Christmas concert items. We are looking forward to recording their beautiful voices over at 3MDR in their recording studio so you can hear them clearly during our outdoor concert. The students in Year 2 enjoyed performing their Waru dance to the beautiful Kasa Kab music at our recent assembly.  I was so proud of their ability to make the connection between theatre and story telling and understand that theatre can be both entertaining and educational. Both levels spent a lesson discussing and completing their end of semester Portfolio Task and enjoyed playing the fast thinking games 'Rock Star' and 'Do This, Do That'. 

Year 3/4

The students in Year 3/4 have revisited the 'Wah Tree' fast thinking drama game and have spent time in our 'singing circle' to learn the melody and lyrics for their class songs, 'Ring the Bells' and 'Christmas YMCA'. We added an extra verse to one of our songs, so now the students can have a little more 'stage' time during our show. We discussed the challenges faced when writing new lyrics to a well known song and spent time clapping the rhythms. It was great to listen to them add or take out lyrics when things didn't seem to fit the rhythm. The students are now helping to finalise the last bars of choreography and are learning to sing music in a 'round'. We are hoping you can help us with this on the 7th December at our Christmas concert....so start fine tuning those vocal chords.

Year 5/6

The students in Year 5/6 have been continuing to rehearse the choreography for the 'Nutbush' and their Christmas finale. They are developing an understanding of dancing with precision and accuracy and our mirrors have certainly helped us with this. We have spent some time creating some simple 'choral-ography' for one of the Christmas concert songs and discussing the importance of using props in a performance. I am always so excited when the students take some creative control over their performance items. The students have completed their end of semester Portfolio Task which gave them the opportunity to think back to their poster project and reflect on what they would do differently next time. We have started to rehearse the Year 6 graduation song (we've had tears already) and my mini orchestra continue to give up their lunch times to rehearse our Christmas song.