The competitive season for show choirs won’t start until mid-January, but many performing groups are already full-steam in rehearsals, including the two show choirs at Iowa City High School, report Kate Meis and Naomi Hemley in the school’s student newspaper.
Mars Hill Bible School, Florence, Ala. (Misty O’Dell/Flickr Creative Commons)One show choir, named “Fourth Ave,” will perform a show entitled “Rise Up” that includes “Eye of the Storm” by Watt White and “Rise Up” by Fat Rat.
“We have a really great group of singers, dancers who are really committed to the art form but also to each other, and [they] have really improved,” the paper quoted the group’s director, Tyler Hagy, as saying. “I think that’s very exciting for us as we head into this season. So I think it’ll be a great, great year for us.”
Show choir performances are typically charged with high energy, lively music, and engaging choreography. Good groups make it look easy in performance, hiding to a certain extent any hint of the hard work that goes into crafting the performance.
“It’s mentally and physically exhausting,” one junior show choir member was quoted as saying. “We’re there for like eight hours till 10. It was the first week of school and everyone was so tired. … But you know, we came back the next day. We came back stronger and better. We’re here to work.”
The other show choir at Iowa City is called “Charisma.” Their show this year is entitled “Dare to Dream” and includes “Stars” by Pentatonix, “Neverland” by Zendaya, and a few other numbers.
All the songs “have sort of that theme of dreaming and thinking about the future and really anything is possible,” Kate and Naomi quoted Matthew Walker, Charisma’s director, as saying. “People can be whatever they want to be if they put their mind to it, and truly anything is possible if you’re willing to work and to just use your imagination.”
