There's an amazing amount of talent in the Rocky River City Schools. Quite a bit of it was on display both Friday and Saturday night at the Kensington Intermediate School talent show. In fact, so many 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students have talent to share that they were again divided into two casts, one for each night. Cast A performed on Friday evening and Cast B performed on Saturday. Each show featured approximately 30 acts.
The shows both included a wide assortment of talent. Audience members heard piano pieces and singing. Dancers performed, showing their skill at cartwheels, synchronized movement, and getting the crowd to clap along.
Katy Perry and Taylor Swift were well-represented in the guise of a few students singing and dancing to the pop stars' music. The audience yelled "opa" for traditional Greek dancing and laughed along as two mimes got stuck in a glass elevator.
Instrumentalists performed, including renditions of Beethoven's moonlight sonata on the piano, Chicken Dance on the clarinet, and Funeral March for a Marionette on the trumpet.
Comedy acts included a woeful child writing home from camp Grenada and a pair of acrobatic brothers. There was a skit about school lunch and even a puppet show with piano thrown in.
Between acts, the fifth-grade masters of ceremony did a great job of keeping things moving along at a fun and quick pace. The MCs are adept at cracking jokes, wearing funny hats, and holding up "clap," "laugh" and emoji signs to keep the audience entertained and involved.
An army of stage hands worked quickly and quietly between acts, putting down gym mats, moving music stands, and wrangling props.
The shows are a lot of fun, of course, but it's a terrific learning opportunity for the kids. They prepared and practiced their acts, then controlled the butterflies while performing in front of a full house. Stage crew kids learned about organization, teamwork, and the goings on backstage in a theater. As she did last year, Monika Nuss directed both shows.