Zara Geddes - Debating Liaison

The St Hilda's Debating Squad has had a successful start to the year. At the end of last term, we had a team competing at the Otago Regional Debating Championships. Our team performed exceptionally well, and a special mention must go to Elsie Burnside, who was selected for the Dunedin Debating Development Squad based on her outstanding performance at Regionals. Zara Geddes was also selected for the Development Squad, despite being unable to participate in Regionals on this occasion. Additionally, this year we have had two senior teams competing in the Dunedin Schools Debating fortnightly competition. Our more experienced Year 13 team has made an impressive start, winning the majority of their debates despite facing tough opposition. Meanwhile, our younger team, who are mostly new to debating, have made big improvements. We look forward to the rest of the debating season, with our Senior 1 team aiming to make it to the semi-finals next term.

Maia Taylor - Visual Arts

The Visual Arts Department has had a fun and creative first half of the year. The Year 12 and 13 students have been hard at work beginning to develop ideas and themes for their art and photography folio boards that they will hand in at the end of the year. At the halfway point in the senior year, boards are well underway with lots of work in a varied range of subjects and approaches. In Years 10 and 11, classes have worked on still-life, kowhaiwhai and portraiture. In Junior school, students have been producing exciting work in paper mache with a focus on pets and animals. Look out for some coral sculptures from Year 9 as part of the set for The Little Mermaid.

Evie-Rose Grace - Choir

Over this term, Sings Hilda have been working hard with Ms Mah, our Choir Director, to prepare three songs for the Big Sing Regional Competition that was held at the Town Hall on the 12th of June. The Big Sing is a nationwide choral competition for secondary school choirs. Leading up to the competition we had a fine tuning workshop for our songs with Elise Bradley from the New Zealand Choral Federation, who gave us many helpful critiques so we could improve our choral performance. We also had a combined concert at Knox Church with the John McGlashan Choir, and the touring choirs from St Andrew’s College in Christchurch. On the 12th of June, we walked down to the Town Hall together, ready to perform our songs in the morning session. Sings Hilda was the second choir to perform, and did very well. We then enjoyed the recitals of all of the other choirs, before the Gala Concert that evening. The choir had a great time participating in the Big Sing, and it was rewarding to hear all of our hard work pay off on stage. Sings Hilda is now working on our music for the Eucharist service this term.

Charlie Williams and Emily Wright - Hip Hop

So far this year, we have had so many fantastic girls join in on the St Hilda's Hip-Hop fun. This term our wonderful coaches and dancers have been working extremely hard in their crews by attending practices multiple times a week as well as adding their input in preparation for the NZCAF Hip Hop Regionals in August. As the Hip-Hop Liaisons and Crew Coaches, we are so incredibly excited to see our girls perform in this competition as well as the Arts Assembly at the end of term. Not only have our crews been working hard, the Year 11, 12, and 13 dance classes have had a wonderful teacher from RASA School of Dance come in and teach them a series of different hip-hop sets which are also being performed in Art Assembly. We are super excited for future Hip-Hop events and we are all keeping our fingers crossed for the wonderful crews to make it through to the national NZCAF Hip-Hop Competition towards the end of Term 3. The Regional Competition is on the 6th of August. The St Hilda's girls would love to be supported through their Hip-Hop journey, so feel free to come along and watch our dancers as they go for gold!

Victoria Avery - Dance

It has been a busy couple of terms in dance with students exploring a wide range of dance styles. This term the senior dance classes have been lucky enough to have Danielle in to teach each class a Hip Hop dance that she had choreographed in previous years for the RASA show. These challenged everyone, as for most of us it was something we weren’t used to doing. These dances will be assessed and go towards each student's repertoire standard. Both classes are looking forward to performing these in Arts Assembly in the last week of term.

The Year 11s have also learnt a fosse dance, choreographed by Miss Geary, as a part of their repertoire standard which everyone enjoyed and were also able to perform in Arts Assembly.

The Year 10s have been learning a Cook Island dance, choreographed by Miss Geary, which everyone enjoyed as it was a style of dance they weren’t used to. They were able to take a trip out to the beach to film this which allowed them to get out of class.

In the Year 12 and 13 dance class, we are starting to work on our own choreographies which have to be based on the theme of Tūrangawaewae - A place to stand. We have all enjoyed exploring an idea and starting to create motifs to put into our choreographies and we look forward to seeing the end result. To help with exploring our ideas and learning new ways to come up with choreography we had a workshop with Footnote NZ Dance, which is a contemporary dance school. Everyone found this very beneficial and it gave us a new way to think about choreography.

Gion Sin - Orchestra

For Orchestra, our regular practice is every Wednesday after school. We have been playing a variety of music, including movie theme songs, classical music, and country music. We are currently working on a production band team for the musical The Little Mermaid, which will be performed in late July, everyone pushed their limit and tried very hard.

Megha Senthilkumar - Music

Music has brought many opportunities and achievements to our students in Term 2. We have had numerous students continue to take part in learning a musical instrument and in class we have had the senior students finish one of two musical performances. Additionally, some pupils have had the chance to record and write songs with Artist, Abby Wolfe. We have even had pupils take their original songs to the stage, performing at Rockquest, with Sapphire Skies reaching the Otago finals, currently, the Year 7 and 8s are forming groups for Rockshop BandQuest! On top of this, more pupils have achieved incredible feats in other musical competitions like the Green Island Vocal Competition, where we had a few students with some great results as well as SOHCAHTOA performing in Chamber Music. We can’t wait to see what Term 3 has in store for us.

Imogen Hornal - Kapa Haka

In Kapa Haka this term we have been developing our overall skills and learning new waiata and waiata-a-ringa. We also spent time learning more about Māori culture and important skills when performing as a group. We helped open St Hilda’s Boarders Open Day as a fun first performance of the year. We look forward to preparing and helping with Open Night, and other school events next term, to help with the build-up for the Otago Polyfest late in Term 3.

Amelie Warlow and Imogen Irvine - Performing Arts

Coming off a fruitful Term 1, including successes in the Sheila Winn Shakespeare Festival and the introduction of the Otēpoti Secondary Improv Club, it has been a busy term in 125, the Performing Arts space. Rehearsals for this year's production of The Little Mermaid have kicked into full swing. At the start of the term, the Year 12 and 13s performed their play 2b or nt 2b, by Sarah Delahunty, which is a modern interpretation of various Shakespearean characters. They are currently working on their techniques internally, working on scenes/monologues in small groups or on their own. The Year 10 and 11s are currently working on the play The Willing Horse by Isobel Andrew, set in 1950s New Zealand in a dance hall. The Year 10s learnt about rock ‘n’ roll dancing for the play, while the Year 11s focused on the major roles for NCEA. The first Year 9 module class have just finished their topic of comedy.

If you are interested in improv, you can see the Ōtepoti Improv Club in action at Te Whare O Rukutia (20 Princess Street, Dunedin) every Monday, from 4:30 pm, open to anyone. Come along and check out the improvisation skills from Dunedin High School students (especially if you are interested in joining Ōtepoti Improvisation next term).