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completely open invitation to take part. All
that is promised (this year to the eighty
boys who volunteered both on and back-
stage) is a role to call their own, but from
often initially tentative enquiries have many
wonderful discoveries again been made.
For example,
Doron Akinyanju
and
DJ
Banda
joined
EdwardWhitbread
in setting
wannabe backing-dancers a new acrobatic
benchmark. Meanwhile
Joel Balogun, Harry
Nichol
and
Freddie Newland
seized their
first chance to get miked and put long-
practised bedroom-mirror routines into
action, all demonstrating how confidence,
energy, and vocal power can combine into
instantly show-stopping numbers. They
were accompanied by the more familiar
faces amongst the group soloists, who were
variously ‘Gonna learn how to fly’ to
Fame
,
determined to ‘Just stick out my chin and
grin’ till a better
Tomorrow
, or beginning to
realise that
I Belong to the Stars
, amongst
so many clearly here in the ascendant,
but all in agreement that ‘If we’re heart to
heart, we can build this dream together’ and
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us
- none of which
could have been imagined, discovered or
realised, without the organisation, patience,
cameraderie and sacrifice of free time
demanded by their preparations.
For all the new thrill of joining the aspiring
fray (no longer ‘creeping
like snail’) what of
those who reflect
and (whether or not
‘sighing like furnace’)
want to ‘draw back the
curtain to see for certain what I thought I
knew’? Enter our soloists, challenged with
owning the empty stage, sharing the power
of their own feeling via another’s lyrics, and
inviting us to experience and believe in their
sentiment. Performances ranging from
Sam
Barrington’s
ethereal, saintly, and musically
immaculate
Any DreamWill Do
, via
Cenk
Oguz’s
explosive broadside (soon Broadway?)
of sound, movement, tap and effulgence of
(Expressing Your) Self
, to
Marcus Ovey’s
confidently controlled
and thus all
the more
sharply biting
insistence that
I Want to Break
Free
, reminded
all that being
given, or
wresting
for
“Enterour soloists,
challengedwith
owningtheempty
stage,sharingthe
powerof their
ownfeelingvia
another’s lyrics”
S u m m e r F i e l d s
2 0 1 5 – 2 0 1 6
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