Performing Arts

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2021, and welcome your input:

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

Welcome back to Term 2. I hope you all had a very enjoyable break. What did you do? The highlight for me was watching some of our talented students perform at the Melbourne Recital Center with the legendary Peter Combe. The 'Fabulous Combettes' looked absolutely amazing in their costumes and I was so proud of their energetic performance. The girls (Tess M, Eve, Alice, Tess R, Laura and Charlee- Belle) sang and danced on stage for over an hour...and Peter described them as 'superb'. Keep a look out on the TV in our school foyer for excerpts from the concert (expertly captured by Mr Kitch). The 'Fabulous Combettes' will also be singing some songs at our weekly assemblies.

In other exciting news, it has been confirmed that this year's Victorian State Schools Spectacular will be returning to a 'live performance' at the John Cain Arena. Some important dates for your diary:

VSSS Dance rehearsal (at school): 6th May 10am to 2.30pm

VSSS Choir rehearsals (Melbourne Town Hall): July 21st and August 11th 

Technical rehearsal (John Cain Arena): 9th and 10th September

Performance Day (John Cain Arena): 11th September

Please make sure your child has joined the VSSS google classrooms as I will communicate on these pages. I can confirm that an SSS T-shirt will now need to be purchased at a cost of $25 and buses organised for our city rehearsals. I will provided further costing details via Compass as soon as possible. A very BIG thank you in advance to Kim Van Hoorn and Mrs Haines for helping me run all the necessary rehearsals. We could not do this without you.

Foundation

Our main focus for this Term will be preparation for our whole school production, 'The Wizard of Oz'. The Foundation students continued to rehearse their songs and dances. We added some sound effects to our moves (chicken noises) this week and continued to work on stagecraft skills such as facing the front and looking out at an audience. It has been wonderful to listen to their improved pitch matching skills when we sing the class roll. 

Level One/Two

Our main focus for this Term will be preparation for our whole school production, 'The Wizard of Oz'. The Level One students will be dancing to the song 'Witches Ball' and the Level Two students are dancing to 'Ease on Down the Road'. We enjoyed watching the video clips for both songs and talking about Michael Jackson in 'The Wiz'. The students began to learn dance steps and song lyrics to their class songs as well as the finale, 'Coming Home' by the Melbourne band Sheppard. We have done some 'peer to peer' teaching this week.

Level Three/Four

Our main focus for this Term will be preparation for our whole school production, 'The Wizard of Oz'. The students will perform to an old classic, 'Dancing in the Street' for the opening of Act 2 as well as in the whole school finale. They have done whole school productions with me in past years so most students have a good understanding of how things work. It will be a busy Term but always very satisfying to watch them work towards a whole school performance and to learn how we improve through repetition and focus. We finished performing our fairytale plays last week. 

Level Five/Six

Our focus this term will be on learning lines for the acting parts in our whole school production. Every student in 5/6 was given a script before the Easter holidays so they could do some preparation before the start of Term 2. I was super impressed with the actors in the scenes we have rehearsed so far. It was great to watch people experiment with their own creative ideas but respectfully follow direction at the same time. We laughed...a lot!!! I know this is going to be so much fun. In between the acting rehearsals the students will all learn a class song as well as the finale. We are planning on ordering production t-shirts this year and I hope to send an order form home in next couple of weeks.