House Arts
Who can even imagine House Arts, one of the most substantial events in one’s Concord school life, finally made the grandest comeback after being away for a year? House Arts is (usually!) an annual event, an inter-house competition among our four houses Teresa, Pankhurst, Gandhi and Mandela. A unified theme will be released 1-2 weeks prior to the competition and each house has to plan how to fit the theme into the four separate categories: House Song, Dance, Ensemble and Spoken Word. The whole competition takes place on a Saturday night in the theatre, and everyone can sign up according to their interest, disregarding their ability in any event and every year there are approximately 300 students from the whole school who take up important roles in the competition.
As the UCAS 2 deadline for 6.2 students were quite close to the House Arts performance date this year, the school decided to release the theme, which was “Lost and Found”, just 9 days before the show which is quite a challenging arrangement for most of us because in previous years, there were about 2 weeks of preparation time. It is no surprise that Concord students are expert in working under pressure, “so how will the performances turn out this year?” we all wondered.
Although it was expected that the whole school would be especially eager to watch the performances this year, the theatre has a limited capacity so fortunately the school offered a livestream display in one of the Morris Building classrooms as well as in West End so everyone could have a chance to watch and cheer for their friends.
Through 9 days of determination and perseverance, we couldn’t believe we finally made it to the performance day. You could already find crowds of students as early as 2 hours before the show in Morris Building classrooms where our dressing rooms were located. Everyone was doing last-minute rehearsals, putting make-up on, making sure everything was in place and excitedly taking pictures with their friends to leave their momentous memories behind. On the other side, the grand show started at 7:30p.m., all seats filled with enthusiastic chitchats. Dr Outram introduced our judges for this year, who were Dr Pugh, Miss Darrell and Miss Leighton. The show then started with amazing Ensemble and Song performances, everyone was cheering and enjoying the supportive atmosphere altogether. Many of us were surprised and glad at the same time to discover those whose hidden talents were finally unleashed through the performance, like the mixture of powerful singing, dancing and acting in the Lalaland-themed performance of Pankhurst Ensemble. We were all clapping our hands in accordance with the beats and we sang along with the melody, some of us even holding our mobile flashlights to show our support to our fellow schoolmates. After the intermission when all song and ensemble performances were finished, it was time for the House Dance and Spoken Word to perform. It was a perfect combination of the interchanging ambience of energy and sentiment, everyone taking snapshots and videos to capture our friends’ impressive performances. A 6.2 Gandhi dancer expressed how “everybody was nervous from finally putting all our practices and efforts on stage, and we turned stress into motivation and courage, showing the best version of ourselves up on there.” We ended on a high note with Teresa’s astonishing House Dance filled with confetti and charisma, and unlike previous years we didn’t get to have the results announced right on that day, instead they were announced afterschool on Monday at the back of Main Hall.
We all gathered in a large crowd and awaited the exciting news brought to us by our three judges. Huge congratulations to Pankhurst winning House Song, Teresa for House Dance, Gandhi for Spoken Word and Mandela winning both the House Ensemble and the whole House Arts! The winning teams cheered and danced around on their feet. Not only did the winning teams show team spirit, the teams which unfortunately didn’t get a prize also continued to show gratitude by smiling and hugging each other as encouragement, it was an absolute delight to see everyone showing so much kindness and appreciation towards one another.
“It was such a thrill to have House Arts resuming after 2 years of absence. I had my experience as an audience member in Form 4, now that I am in 6.2, I finally got to perform in it. The audience were amazing with the clapping and cheering, I had a blast.”
– a 6.2 Gandhi student a part of Spoken Word
– Tiffany 6.2
