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Arts News

SMC —

SMC Highland Dancers win a national Innovation Award and our Chamber Choir sing for the ordination of the new bishop as our co-curricular arts groups get under way for the year.

Highland Dance excellence
Our SMC Highland Dance group have won a very special Innovation award, presented by the Piping and Dancing Association of New Zealand. It is awarded to a group that is “championing” Highland Dancing or Piping in the community, and the Association considered our Highland Dance group highly innovative as it appears to be the only school-based group of its kind in the country. The group was founded by Annabel Watts and is now into its 5th year. Present members are Ashley Marfell, Abby Smith and Olivia Marfell.

Chamber Choir’s first performance of the year
The SMC Chamber Choir lead by Rachel Wilford performed last Saturday morning in the Christchurch Boys’ High school hall as part of the Episcopal Ordination and Installation of The Reverend Dr Peter Carrell as the Ninth Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Christchurch. The girls sang alongside choirs from other Christchurch schools and were, as usual, great ambassadors for St Margaret’s.

SMC Co-Curricular Arts
Sign up day on the first day of term was very busy, with hundreds of girls keen to join the more than 40 extra-curricular arts and cultural groups that we have on offer. Our groups are lead by either SMC staff, external itinerant tutors or students, and nearly all of them are open entry, with a few going through an audition process. Most groups are open to girls in Year 7 and above, while some are for Middle or Senior School only, and practices take place before and after school, in break times and lunchtimes. The majority of groups will be starting this week or next, if they haven’t already begun. We encourage our students to follow their passion and join as many groups as they can manage while balancing academic and sporting commitments. For information please see our website or contact our Arts Facilitator Mary Davison mary.davison@stmargarets.school.nz.

Private Music/Speech & Drama classes
Lessons have already begun and teachers should have contacted students by now to organise times. For anyone who is still to register for music lessons or individual/group Speech & Drama lessons, please download a registration form from the website and hand in to the main office as soon as possible. We can’t guarantee a place at this stage but will do our best. Please note that Speech & Drama and Music lesson times will be rotated for all Year 7-10 students so that the same subjects are not always targeted. For senior students, study periods may be scheduled regularly, otherwise lessons will also be rotated. Some of our itinerant teachers are only available at certain times which may restrict the timetable.

Senior Production 2019: Grimm Tales
First dramatised by the Young Vic Theatre Company, Grimm Tales, by Carol Ann Duffy, is faithful to the original stories by the Brothers Grimm. Whilst we are familiar with the “pretty” versions of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and other tales, the originals are dark, gruesome and often nightmarish. The St Margaret’s College Production contains these elements but also shows the playful humour, physical farce and overall fun of many of the tales.

Within a forest setting, seven stories ranging from Ashputtel to Rumplestiltskin, are acted and narrated by a cast of fifty students. Dancers, the spirits of the trees, draw the characters deeper and deeper into the woods where the wolf waits to pounce and the birds of prey circle overhead. Often, though, the characters step out of the shadows into the world of romance and magic; Ashputtel meets her prince, the wolf is slain and straw is woven into gold.

The production will be in the Charles Luney Auditorium on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July. Audition Packs will be available outside the Performing Arts Office WN202 from morning break on February 13. To book an audition, sign your name next to a time and date on the Booking Sheets on the Black Box/Arts Noticeboard. Auditions will be after school from February 18 to February 21 and February 25 to March 1. All auditions are in the Ngaio Marsh Theatre (Black Box)

Middle School Production 2019
There will be a Middle School Production for Year 7-10 girls in Term 3. More information to come!

Ashy: new release
SMC old girl Ashy Batchelor has released another fantastic single called 'Temporary Crush' that came out last Friday, with video released this week. The song, supported by New Zealand On Air and recorded in the same studio Lorde has used, is doing very well with impressive numbers on Spotify. Here's the link to Spotify, iTunes & Apple Music - http://smarturl.it/temporarycrush