Soph Kingi’s Hip Hop crew achieve international success, Nat Hutton selected for Rockquest Nationals, awards galore for Highland Dancers and $6000 raised at SMC Eggsfactor.

Eggsfactor
A huge congratulations to all our students and staff involved in this superb fundraising event which brings our community together for a unique and highly entertaining evening where ballet, Hip Hop, poetry and line-dancing keep the audience on their toes. Months of work go into the organisation and preparation of Eggsfactor, and we extend our heartfelt thanks to all those who contribute: the performing staff, the student mentors, the backstage and front-of-house teams. Special mention must go to the very eclectic judges who added to the fun, and, most importantly, to the Eggs Committee and the four main perpetrators, Sujean In, Maddie Dalgety, Kaitlin Burden and Natalie Hutton, as well as Sinead Mitchell.

Rockquest Nationals
Natalie Hutton has had her dream come true with selection into the Rockquest Nationals. Nat, alongside Christchurch Girls’ High’s Minnie Robberds, will compete against two other line-ups in the Solo-Duo category with their group There’s A Tuesday Between A Monday And Between A Wednesday, September 14th in Auckland. Natalie, our co-Head of Arts this year, has been singing and songwriting since her Primary School years and has contributed hugely to the musical life of St Margaret’s as well as representing the school at events in the community. The girls performed recently as part of the Christchurch Arts Festival in a pre-concert function at the Town Hall for Julia Deans, Flip Grater and Bella Kalolo. Follow this link to check out the girls’ songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC8PdByZ9Wg

Hip Hop International Championships
Soph Kingi’s crew Masque placed 1st out of 65 groups performing in the Varsity category prelims in Arizona and are now through to the semi-finals. Soph auditioned and was selected for Identity Dance Company, based in Auckland, in January, and has been dancing with the company this year.

Hip Hop National Achievement
We congratulate Grace Jenkins from Year 11, whose Hip Hop crew from Zion Dance Studios, “Aperture”, did extremely well in the last weekend of the holidays up in Hamilton at the New Zealand National Battlegrounds Competition. They won their category out of 16 awesome crews from all over the country. The crew are super excited as they will travel to Sydney for the World competition in October.

Highland Dance Success
In preparation for the NZ Champs the St Margaret’s Highland Dance group competed at the Christchurch Competitions Society competitions where the girls once again won the Highland Reel Team and Irish Reel Team Open to retain the trophies they have won for the last 3 years.
The New Zealand Highland Dancing Championships were held in Blenheim during the July school holidays with over 200 dancers attending. Ashely Marfell, Olivia Marfell and Abby Smith all competed with great success.
Over three days the girls competed in 10 New Zealand Championship dances, with the dancers being ranked from 1 to 10 in each event with the overall New Zealand Champion being presented to the dancer gaining most points overall ten events.
Ashley was ranked 9th overall in the Under 18 age group. Olivia was ranked 11th overall in the Under 16 age group.
Abby was ranked 1st and awarded the National New Zealand Champion of Champions Under 16 years dancer for 2019. To achieve this she won the NZ Title in the Sword Dance, Irish Reel and Irish Jig Single Time, as well as placing 2nd in the Highland Fling, Highland Reel and Seann Triubhas, 3rd in the Reel O’Tulloch and Irish Jig Double Time, and 4th in the Sailors Hornpipe and Irish Hornpipe.

Billie Leiataua’s “Mind”
This single from our very talented Billie Leiataua will be released on Spotify this Friday. Billie has been studying voice with Nathan Phillips Vocals, a leading Christchurch vocal and artist development company. We look forward to hearing her latest creative offering. Billie designed the cover art for the single shown here.

Atamira Experience: Annālida Jaeger & Brianna Odering
NCEA Dance students had the opportunity last Thursday to experience a workshop run by three amazing members of Atamira Dance Company from Auckland. We gained an insight into how they warm up as a company which we discovered had a very holistic approach and was inspired by Māori culture. We were also taught phrases by each of the dancers, some of which we saw performed at the Town Hall where they performed their new work, Onepū. All the girls involved were grateful for this opportunity from such a professional dance company.
On Friday night everyone who participated in the workshop had the opportunity to see the work that was taught to us live. The performance was beautiful to watch and we thoroughly enjoyed it. It gave us an insight into Māori culture and Māori Contemporary Dance. We are all so thankful for this opportunity to learn and work with Atamira and then to see their performance in person.

Senior Arts Awards
Applications are now closed for Senior Dance, Drama, Music, Oratory, Technical and Visual Art Awards. All girls applying will be notified of the results and successful recipients will be presented their awards at our Senior Arts Awards Assembly scheduled for the last week of term, September 17th.
Later this term there will be an opportunity for Year 7-10 girls to apply for Middle School Arts Awards (Badges and Colours.)

Performing Arts Showcase 2019
Tuesday, September 17th we will be holding our annual Performing Arts Showcase in the Charles Luney Auditorium at 7pm. This is a wonderful occasion for the community to gather and be entertained by our singers, dancers, musicians and actors involved in our school performing arts co-curricular groups.

Performing Arts Trip to New York 2020
Parents of girls interested in this exciting trip scheduled for September 20-October 3rd next year must email Head of Performing Arts Faculty Amanda Woods amanda.woods@stmargarets.school.nz by September 1st to secure a place.

Middle School Production: The Wizard of Oz
Tickets are now on sale for this magical show that promises to delight audiences of all ages. Bring the whanau young and old and join Dorothy and friends as they skip through their adventures in Oz, beautifully framed by the large Pixel screen we enjoyed for Alice! September 9, 10 & 11 in the Charles Luney Auditorium:

https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2019/the-wizard-of-oz/christchurch

Grimm Tales photos
Please follow this link to purchase your photos: https://petramingneau.smugmug.com/PRODUCTION-2019-GRIMMS-TALE/n-rmJML9/