Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Talent Show looks to become a Beaver tradition



EMILY BELOWICH '11

On Thursday, November 15th, the Beaver student body packed into Bradley Hall to come to Beaver’s first annual Talent Show. Organized by members of student council, this talent show was admittedly an attempt to increase Beaver’s insufficient school spirit. Initially, the organizers for the show were concerned about the level of success the show would bring, primarily because not many people signed up. However, after the performances, freshman class treasurer Kirsten Gute said, “It went really well; it was really enjoyable to watch. We did an awesome job organizing this!” Beaver’s spirit was definitely raised as they watched peers, classmates, friends, and even a teacher, participate in a variety of different talents.

While the whole school attended, only upper school students partook in the show. Such talents varied from Nat Harrington ’10 chanting twelve lines from the Iliad, Aeneid, and the Odyssey, to Raina Jacques ’09, singing a beautiful version of I Know Who Holds Tomorrow. Theo Norton ’08 impressed the crowd with some neat yo-yo tricks, while Ben Jacobson ’09, Ben Patten ’09, and math teacher Kevin Bau rocked out on the bass and drums to The Beatles. During the show Bau comically stated that, although it was a student talent show, he felt like a “student of life.” Emcee Sam Packard ’08 got the crowd laughing with some jokes while students ran into technical difficulties.

In the end, however, Jeff Higgins ’08 walked away with a $100 Visa gift card for his outstanding piano composition entitled "Exceptional Life," dedicated to the memory of Alex Cohn ’07, who passed away last year. He also dedicated the song to other students from his old school, who died in the past few years. This talent show was a great success, and student council is looking forward to planning another one next year to start a Beaver tradition.

Image & video credit: Michael Firer '09

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would like to point out that "start a Beaver tradition" is inaccurate phrasing. You should have said "rekindle," as this is not the first time (in recent memory) that there has been a talent show. Within the past 10 years, there have been instances where talent shows were held twice a year, at least, and even more recently (no more than 4 years if I remember correctly) there were still all school talent shows.

Ok, /endAlumRant (it wont let me put "<>" around that, which kinda ruins the joke)

Anonymous said...

You make a good point. Just last year (if I remember correctly), the Senior Showcase sort of filled the role of talent show. But then, this is an all-school event, during all-school meeting, which makes it a little different. But as you say, you just have to go back another couple years to find that. And it must have been done countless other times over the past four score and eight years, too. I agree that too often, we ignore tradition and somehow think we're the first to ever be doing this, that this point in time is special. That's true of all humanity, in fact--the various quotes along the lines of "I think we've basically discovered all there is to know about science" come to mind.

This newspaper is just the latest in a long line of what seem to be pretty short-lived Beaver newspapers. But from the beginning we've tried to acknowledge that--for instance, in the list of past Beaver publications that accompanied our name contest post. And some features currently in the works go even further in celebrating Beaver's history.

So in the future, we'll try to be better about this sort of thing. And we'll hope and pray that the folks 4 years down the line don't forget us, too.

< / endEditorRant >

Anonymous said...

You could quote me on this (if you knew my name...): Toph, you're gonna go places my friend.

To make a more useful comment, it would certainly be good if they were brought back for a longer stay again... they always used to elicit school spirit. Just like a school paper does, even if it has no name.

Cheers, and keep up the good editing :)

Oh, and I guess my (untested) assumption was right; if I had used spaces before, it wouldn't have complained about bad HTML. Oh well

Anonymous said...

Haha. Well now I'm wondering who else could be up at 3:30 AM EST reading the Beaver newspaper web site. But anyway, thanks. :)