The talent show has finally ceased… I feel as though the days before I had a hard time sleeping because I wanted to make sure that everything got done and was done well…. I had to continually remember that the focus of the talent show was to empower the performers…not create a Broadway production…

The day before the performance we had a dress rehersal…which I had to explain multiple times the definition…  I discovered the word is used here…but I believe they were not familiar with it, due to the lack of performance opportunities…

The students were extremely excited to get up in front of their peers and the community and show off their talents… The look on their faces after performing was priceless… to be able to offer the talents they had and then practically receive a standing ovation for it blew them away…

We started off with around 17 acts…. But the day of dress rehersal and the actual show… kids from the area heard the music and ran up to me asking if they could perform… being that the show was relatively relaxed… my stage managers and MC were cool with the ad on performances… The people that wanted to join the show were mostly dancers… they danced pantsula or  hip-hop… it was quite the show… because it was at 4pm…. Kids were getting out of school and heard the loud music and screaming.. therefore the audience continually grew in size as the afternoon went on… the young junior high students were the funniest audience members and so supportive of the performers… they screamed at the top of their lungs if they liked the performance…  they would get up and dance in honor of the performance….

I ended up choreographing two dances… the first dance was with two female students.. it was a hip-hop dance to ‘Run It!’… they did an amazing job… the second dance was for the GAT team… three tall whities that did a hilariously sensual dance to the song “My Humps”…. They were great …. To put some additional comedic humor into the dance… we had them run off stage and stuff their backs with a towel.. so the last part of the dance was performed with a hunch back… even though the song is about lovely lady humps….  Hilar.

    After the show… Justice, the MC…. Stayed after and helped clean up and chat with the Oasis staff members…  he continued to thank me and told me how this created an opportunity to test some of his strengths… he was so grateful that Oasis had offered something out of school to focus on…. The following day Gugu, a girl that I am mentoring, came and visited me at the house… she went on and on about how wonderful the talent show was…. How much fun she had…and the she said, “That was the best day of my life.”  I couldn’t believe it, she didn’t even perform…she was a spectator… but apparently loved what she saw… Although it was a lot of planning…. (I tend to opt for more relational work and challenges…..) I think the ‘planning’ part was necessary to provoke more relational ties and relational experiences that the students could have with one another…