Lights, Camera, Action

Ivanhoe's Talented Singers

By Christian Arnel and Lucy Shaefer, Year 11, The Ridgeway Campus

More Than Words is an anticipated singing event that takes place each year at both The Ridgeway Campus and Plenty Campus. Comprising of singers from both the primary and secondary school, the concert truly encompasses the idea that music has no age. The entirety of the affair provides students with an opportunity to experience a real-world performance. From auditions and workshops to the concert itself, it is a chance for vocalists to broaden their singing horizons and develop a deeper musical understanding.

In past years, the auditions were filmed by the school and submitted to an outside adjudicator who would make the decision on which students would progress further within the program. However, due to the effects of COVID-19 the auditions for the past two years have been recorded independently at home. The presence of coronavirus had led to uncertainty of whether the event would progress without any interruptions, which seemed to be the case…at first. After being selected by the adjudicator, who this year is the greatly commendable Julie O’Hara, the singers underwent a workshop in which they performed their piece and received personal one-on-one feedback. 

 From traditional jazz to modern R&B, Melbourne’s own Julie O’Hara is an active jazz singer with an array of musical performance experiences and vocal skills. Here, with her musical wisdom, Julie mentored each vocalist in a workshop. She worked to not only enhance their performance, but give insight into musicality, performance preparation, storytelling through song, and audience engagement. We speak for all the vocalists when we say that the workshops were truly an amazing experience.

These workshops were to be followed by the More Than Words night itself but alas coronavirus had its way. The concert has now been postponed, and in order to have the confidence that the event will in fact take place it has been transformed into yet another virtual performance. Much like what occurred last year, the chosen singers from Ivanhoe Campus were recorded and published onto the Ivanhoe Grammar School YouTube page for all to view.

 Although this may not seem like the ideal situation for the concert, we remain grateful that we get to have some form of a performance evening. Occasions such as ‘More Than Words’ are not always common, but when available, they are significantly participated in and appreciated. Therefore we, along with our fellow ‘More Than Words’ singers, would like to invite all to watch our performances which range from 'Don’t Cry For Me Argentina' (sung by the talented Sara Suiter) to 'Diamonds' (presented by Buckley House’s very own Ruby Turner). We promise it will be well worth your time. 

Here is Plenty Campus' More than Words Concert: 

Here is The Ridgeway Campus' full More than Words Concert:

The Shakedown Concert 

By Emma Last, Year 10, Plenty Campus

Shakedown is a dance concert which is held annually at the Plenty Campus, showcasing our school’s talented dancers and performers. The first Shakedown concert was held in 2019 and was organised by Mr Callegari and the performing arts team. Those involved performed in a range of dances, including a whole cast opening and closing number with many other dances of various styles in between. Shakedown is a great opportunity for students to perform and express themselves through dance and most importantly, have fun! 

Due to the strenuous lockdown in 2020, Shakedown was not able to go ahead. However, those involved should be commended for their efforts as they worked over Zoom to learn different dances, in hopes that they would be able to perform for a live audience. Unfortunately, lockdown prevented this from happening. So, this year, 2021, will be our second Shakedown performance! Our performers have been working over the past few months between lockdowns to not only learn dances, but to choreograph too. 

This year’s Shakedown will be more ‘student-led’ meaning a lot of the dances are choreographed and taught by different students with assistance and guidance from Mr Callegari. This has given students with a passion for dance a chance to not only express their creativity, but to build stronger bonds and friendships between year levels.

Some of the dance styles featured in this year’s Shakedown include jazz, acro and hip hop, and a range of upbeat songs including ‘All That Jazz’ from the musical ‘Chicago’, and ‘From Now On’ from ‘The Greatest Showman.’

As a member of the cast, I am so excited to be able to perform soon and to finally be dancing and rehearsing with my friends again when we are finally able to. Special thanks to the Shakedown cast and all teachers involved for your constant efforts to stay motivated and practice whilst in lockdown!

Film Project

By Ashley Syers, Year 10, The Ridgeway Campus

Deciding to do the film project was one of the best decisions I've made this year. I am new to Ivanhoe and so when I came here I was so happy that it offered so many creativity based extracurriculars. Since I joined the film project I have had so much fun and learnt a lot. This is because you are taught about the process of how films are made, the different genres, types of camera shots, how to make shot lists and more. 

Though it can be stressful at times I feel that it has been an awesome creative outlet for me. In the project we started fully from scratch, where they gave us a prompt for the film and started brainstorming some ideas. We then shared our ideas with the group so we could all build upon those ideas. Once we came up with an idea for a film we started work on character descriptions, attributes and relationships, along with starting a timeline as to how the story will flow. After all the brainstorming and planning had happened, we then wrote our scripts. After that, we had to prepare storyboards and shot lists which helped visualise how the film will look.  

After all that, we hosted auditions for roles, and once everyone was cast we started to film. At the moment we are still filming, but because of the obvious world conditions (COVID-19 pandemic), our filming has come to a halt until we are back at school. Though the world's unfortunate events have thrown the timeline off course a little, I can't wait to (hopefully) finish filming. 

Honestly, the film project is so much fun as it allows you to be as creative as you want. What's so cool is that you are surrounding yourself with a bunch of creative people, so you can bounce ideas off of each other. Doing the film project has helped me make friends and find people who share the same interests as me and helped a lot with my management skills so I do genuinely suggest anyone interested in just having a fun time to try out the film project. 

Opportunities for Young Musicians, Dancers and Actors

By Kevan Abraham, Year 7, Plenty Campus

As a Year 7 that just started secondary school, I was assuming that it would take a year or two for me to settle in and start doing extra-curricular activities. But I was absolutely bamboozled by how quick me and a lot of other Year 7s joined many different co-curricular activities. In my case, I joined up for the musical, the Year 7 Jam Band, The secondary choir and the A capella group and each of them have been amazing experiences. 

The musical was one of the most fun-filled and action-packed experiences ever. Rehearsals were always extremely fun and everyone had huge smiles on their faces. Rehearsals were one of the things I looked forward to after school. Not only was it a place to goof around and be yourself but it was also a space where so many talented people came together to create an amazing show. Then when open night came around everything became and felt so alive and the feeling was surreal.

Another awesome experience is Jam Band which was overall a crazy fun hangout session with my friends, playing music and having an amazing time. Every week on Friday we all look forward to it, and can’t wait to get back to jamming.

A capella group and choir are also a blast and an amazing experience as you get to mingle with other year levels while creating masterpieces of work. Every session we all have a smile on our faces and are determined to make sure we always do a better job.

Plenty Campus Drama Club

By Lauren Black, Year 12, Plenty Campus and Zoe Black, Year 10, Plenty Campus

We the Plenty Campus Drama Club, have recently been working on our character building, interpretive and theatrical skills in preparation for the upcoming Performing Arts concert and Drama Club performance. 

The various monologues, duologues and group scenes have helped us all to build interpersonal relationships across year-levels and have given us great opportunity to further our respective skills on the stage. Even while being online, we have kept productive and high spirited as we chip away at our comical and dramatic scripts. 

While lockdown has been difficult, the anticipation of such well-loved performances keeps us theatre kids motivated. We are always learning and growing, finding ourselves more confident and co-operative because of each performance. Being a part of Drama Club has been something that has helped grow our individual characters, while being online but also while being face to face. Every single one of us are beyond grateful to the music and drama faculty for allowing us Year 10-12 kids to create such beautiful art together on a yearly basis. 

With the various well received performances we have been so blessed to create have allowed our club to thrive these past few years and made Drama Club something we all hold extremely close to our hearts. We are always open to questions regarding what is offered within the co-curricular activity of Drama Club, as we encourage anyone with a creative mind to in future join our club. 

Finally, we hope to see many of your beautiful faces attending our respective end of year performances.