Revived Talent Show Features Musical Acts
June 4, 2019
Organized by the Leadership class as a fundraiser for the Oakland UCSF-Benioff Oakland Children’s Hospital, a talent show featured various musical and dance performances in the CPAC on May 29 during Academy period.
The project was spearheaded by seniors Katie Clare and Hillary Weaver, who hoped to reboot a “new and improved talent show” tradition.
Student performances were mainly musical. Sibling duo senior Arriana Glenn and junior Kiera Glenn sang Bruno Mar’s Grenade, sophomore John Browning played Payphone by Maroon 5 on the guitar, and senior Tommy Raftis played the piano and sang Note to Self, an original piece.
Freshman Rhys Pullen performed an arrangement of Old Town Road on the piano. “I chose to play that song because I knew everyone would like it and could sing along because they all knew the lyrics,” said Pullen.
Dance was featured as 8 sophomore California Academy of Performing Arts (CAPA) dancers performed a hip-hop routine using choreography they found on Youtube. “Since CAPA doesn’t do hip-hop anymore, this was a chance for us to do a dance that isn’t ballet, tap, or jazz,” said sophomore dancer Lindsay Scarpitti.
“I really like the idea because, for dancers, we aren’t connected to the rest of the school like other sports so we don’t really get to showcase what we do very often to the rest of the school. So it’s nice having opportunity to have students see what we do every day for like 3 hours a day,” added sophomore Caterina Dunbar, 1 of the CAPA dancers.
There was also a showing of a music video directed, filmed, and edited by the Video Production 3 class, starring Arriana Glenn. According to senior Alejandro Rodriguez, 1 of the film directors, the video began as a class project to experiment with 3D filming and it took them 4 months to complete. However, only the 2-D version of the music video was showcased at the talent show.
“The intention was for this to be the 1st ever VR music video to be made at Campo, but we had some problems during production and ended up spending a lot more time doing the traditional version, but I still think that version turned out great because our video editor was great,” said Rodriguez.
Video Production teacher Justin Seligman entered the video into the talent show and was supportive throughout the project’s creation. “I’m very proud of their work, you know. Helping students be creative and successful was very rewarding to a teacher. As artists, we always see areas of improvement. But each piece is a learning piece. They did a tremendous job and we’re always looking for ways to share our work,” said Seligman.
Many students were happy to have the opportunity to demonstrate their hobbies for their peers and most began practicing their act a month in advance. “I think the talent show is a really good idea because for me at least, I’m not comfortable performing and doing anything in front of everybody, so it gives students a chance to push themselves out of their comfort zone,” said Browning.
