By Danielle Kutchel
There are stars in the making right here in the south-east, and they’re in our schools.
More than 200 state school students, from primary and secondary schools around the area, descended on Officer Secondary College for a rehearsal ahead of this year’s Victorian State Schools Spectacular (VSSS), to be held on Saturday 14 September at Melbourne Arena.
The performance is the opportunity of a lifetime for the students, who will perform to an audience of around 12,000 people at Melbourne Arena and a TV audience later in the year on Network Seven.
The students, from 17 schools, are part of the Mass Dance ensemble.
This year’s theme for the Spectacular is ‘Made of Stars’, and students are hard at work perfecting their moves in time for the big day.
Choreographic assistant at VSSS Hara Papoulias said it is important to find moves that the kids of all abilities and ages will pick up easily.
The moves are “typical party steps” similar to what the students would have seen online or in other media, so that they are already somewhat familiar with them.
“It’s not a matter of getting it, it’s a matter of them enjoying themselves while they’re doing it,” she says.
Students from Pakenham Consolidated School were among those rehearsing, and said they can’t wait to get on stage.
Katie said the best part of the experience was getting to dance with her friends – but classmate Leah added some of the dance moves were a bit tricky.
“Where it’s really fast, it took us a while to learn it,” Leah explained, miming the action.
Cody said he was most looking forward to dancing in front of everyone on stage and being put on TV. Others said the food would be a highlight of the day.
As for any pre-performance jitters, there is no sign of them here.
Asked whether they were nervous at all, the answer from all the budding stars was a resounding, “no!”
