Year 7 Performing Arts Day At Grace Lutheran College – Rothwell Campus
Last week we visited Grace Lutheran College for the year 7 performing arts day. Every year the school puts on a day with a bunch of different activities such as drama, choir, drumming, dancing etc. The students can choose what activities they’d like to do.
We had a group of 40 children. According to the teachers our drumming incursion was the most popular activity! We had 2 x 100 minute sessions with the group. We were to create a performance piece to showcase at the end of the day to parents and other students.
Just like last year, we really enjoy this experience with the children because having a longer session allows us to really teach a rhythm. The students have the opportunity to feel confident and familiar before having to perform.
The Workshops
We focused the sessions on the rhythm Macru. It was a new choreographed piece that we were very excited to be sharing with the school and it worked a treat! The show would involve body percussion,drumming, singing and some dancing.
The students love the drumming and the dancing equally and there was one student who had achieved quite high musically in the past and this really showed with the drumming. His timing and ability to pick up on the rhythms was very exciting to witness. We gave him the special opportunity to call us into the rhythm at the beginning of the performance. He was dedicated to this responsibility and he asked us numerous times before the performance, “How does this go again?”. We adored his dedication to the task.
In the first 100 min we focused mostly on the drumming, getting the group familiar with the three different ensemble parts. In the last 10 minutes we touched on the dancing part of the performance.
In the second 100 min session, we focused on the beginning, the ending, a break and of course the dancing. For the performance practice, we joined the drumming and the dancing together.
The Performance
For the performance we were all to start drumming and then half of the group were to get up and perform the dance while the other continues drumming. Then we would swap over.
Just before we began the show we could see that some of the students were getting a little nervous. We recalled the last practice session we did and asked the students would they like to go that fast again?. They were a little unsure, so we asked the audience would they like us to go fast or slow. They all cheered and yelled out “fast!” So we decided to keep it at a medium tempo to keep the students relaxed.
The Finale
The crowd cheered after our performance they all enjoyed it so much and all of the teachers commented on how fantastic it was.
Thank you for having us again Grace Lutheran College we look forward to seeing year 7 next year!!
