Sis and I went to it last night to support our Baby Sister who is still at WGC. Unfortunately they didn't win, they placed second and apparently Baby is a bit depressed. She has devoted the last three months to it, with practises at least twice a week. They had the theme "a woman's worth" which is a fine theme but the whole girl power thing had already been done by St Mary's earlier in the night. Not as well done tho. WGCs dancing and costuming was amazingly tight! Well rehearsed and well choreographed. But they were let down a bit by their props.
Wellington College won with a fantastic number which went under the theme of "Protest" very relevant! They started in India with protests against the british regime and they had all these boys dancing Bollywood style! The british were represented by Boys on stilts opressing everyone with huge hats and huge clubs. Then they moved to south africa with a Boer War type of thing with these funny looking little settlers with big guns and "african tribes" with shields and spears going against them. It was then the All Blacks tour in South Africa with an All Black up against a Springbok, but then they cut to NZers of the time (in dated looking clothes) protesting with Police with huge Riot shields pushing them back. Their last one was of communist china where they had a bit of a Martial Arts Demo and then the Chinese all got into formation and made a tank a smaller boy came on stage and they tableaued Tianamin Square! In the background they had these big boards with pictures from each of scenes which were then turned around and joined together to make a dove symbol and the student started teaching a Boer some hiphop moves and then they all piled on stage and did some hip hop dancing! Sooo good!!
There were some other ones worth note, Tawa College had a neat theme of In the Attic. It had stunning props and costumes (including a person in a dragon outfit that got chased off by a pointy hatted princess holding a fire extinguisher) but their dancing was not on par with WGC and Col. There were two intermediate schools that were so cute because of smallness.
But the strangest and funniest for me was Paraparaumu College, who did their performance around Captain Planet and the Planeteers! Extra freaky considering I had just read Jenni's Blog entry on the Planeteers earlier in the day. Soo bizarre. Especially the Blue Painted boy who was Captain Planet. All the planeteers were represented and they had ugly wigs on. They said that battling Pollution was a metaphor for trying to deal with all the real tough issues that face teenagers, eg Depression, Change (I forget the rest).
I wish that I had gotten involved in StageChallenge when I was at school. The school that I teach at didn't have an entry so I was free and happy supporting WGC. I hope Baby feels better soon.