by Sage Kluge
The New Prairie Show Choirs, Sing Sensation and Innovation, will begin competitor season in Bernard. Sing Sensation’s theme is “Heartbeat” and Innovation’s is “Fire and Ice.”
Bailey Lenig has been in show choir for four years and is captain of Sing Sensation, Jake Mitchell has been in show choir for four years and is the captain of Innovation. Lenig stated, “Being Sing Sensation captain means that I plan all the make-up, hair, and make sure that every girl has the same eye shadow, hair style, fits into their dresses, fits into the right shoes properly, etcetera.”
Having a busy schedule with competitions on the weekends and rehearsals on Tuesday and Thursday in the afternoon after school, the show choir also has a regular class hour they use to work hard to prepare their show.
Mitchell explained “How a basic rehearsal works is that we start off with warming up our voices, then normal conditioning. Afterwards, we will do choreography the whole rehearsal, or sometimes we will dance with a little bit of singing. We will also have rehearsals that consist of cleaning our choreography.”
After many tiring practices they will soon have their first competition at Northridge High School on the 16th of Feb.
“The competition season is very stressful,” Lenig mentioned, “We leave the school on a Saturday at 2 am, sometimes later depending on our performance time. We arrive at whatever school we are performing at, and depending how the order is, Sing Sensation will perform first and then after all the girls have gone there will be a ceremony. Mixed will go after the “Sensation” ceremony is over and once they are all finished there will be a ceremony for them, as well.”
New Prairie is a fairly small school compared to the other schools that we compete against. Lenig mentioned, “We have a tough competition so after Sensation and mixed have their ceremonies that is what tells us if we make it to finals and then if we do then we have another performance and won’t be home till really late. Sometimes our competition days can go from 20 to 24 hours.”
Being new in show choir or any event can be very nerve wracking and overwhelming.
Mitchell and Lenig both also explained, “Don’t be scared of all the hours that we put in. It’s a lot of fun and you have the ability to make a lot more friends. Enjoy all the time you have because you won’t believe how fast your years of show choir can go by. We grow as a family and you’ll miss that when it’s gone.”
Alexis Benslussan is new to New Prairie and to show choir. Benslussan stated, “I was really nervous when it was our first rehearsal. I thought it was going to be really strict, but my experience is better than I expected. Now coming to rehearsal is what makes me happy.”