The students who took part arrived at Alfriston School at 9 0'clock, excited by the unknown day ahead. [The whole point of the workshop is that you don't know anything in advance about what you are doing during the day, except what category your in.] We were then split into our four groups, where we practised our moves/songs/activities/instruments.
At the end of the school day, we returned home, after rehearsing in front everyone else. We were expected to return roughly 3 hours later so we could perform to our parents, and show what we learned in the space of less than 6 hours.
The choir performed a quodlibet *(a fun song in several parts) about the instruments of the orchestra, and opera ('Speed Your Journey' * from Aida) and shared La Bamba * with the orchestra who played two other pieces:"Rockin' Round" and "Lean on Me". The dance group performed a line-dance and a hip hop routine, and the drama group demonstrated four games that practise improvisation [the art of making things up].
The performance ended with thunderous applause and everyone was re-reunited with their proud parents. Everyone will probably say, if you ask them, that they thought the performance was "good" and "fun", but deep-deep down people thought that it was educational and awesome.
By Ricki-Jean
Shayla added:
On the 13th of July some people from the Gardens, Clevedon, Brookby and Alfriston went to Alfriston for a one-day workshop.The options were drama, dance, orchestra and choir. The option I chose was drama. I picked drama because I thought that I was quite good at acting, and my mum put me in to acting classes awhile ago. But the thing was, I did not like the way that I was always late to school on the days I had acting class.
When everyone got to the hall, the teachers introduced themselves and they told everyone where they had to go. But they had to wait a while because some people got dropped off at the wrong place, so a teacher that worked at Alfriston School had to get them and bring them to the real hall because everyone thought it was the community hall right next door.
All of that day the drama group practised or what ever you picked to do, but the thing that I liked the best about drama was that we just played games that involved acting. The rest of the groups just needed to practise, practise and practise but we just needed to learn how to play the games.
When we performed at 7 o’clock, all of the children were in black - well, some of the children had blue jeans, but there was one kid that had blue sleeves.
* This is not us singing - they are the songs we sang, though.
