A concert with a difference
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Jeanne-Lajoie Pavillion élémentaire took a new approach to the traditional elementary school Christmas concert when it hosted an exciting, high-tech, engaging concert for parents and the rest of the school.
Jeanne-Lajoie’s 430 elementary students took part while being viewed by roughly 400 parents. The concert was held in a gym on the high school side of the building, unlike the previous years when it was hosted in their own gym. This was decided since the high school’s has more lighting and special effect features that would make the show better.
The show was held in the darkness; the only lights that were on were on the stage acting like spotlights. In the centre of the gym, educational co-ordinators Natasha Beaulieu and Annie Girard sat at a sound system, controlling the echos and the outcome of the children’s singing so that it was heard well around the rest of the gym.
The highlight of the show was when Mirianne Plamondon’s Grade 6 class danced to the rising song “Gangnam Style,” originally played by South Korean musician PSY. Their show started out slow and Christmas-themed when it showed all the students dressed in black laying on the floor “sleeping.” Fellow student David McLarem, dressed as Santa, walked through the sleeping students about to deliver gifts when one woke and saw him. The rest of the sleepers woke up to see that man who should never be seen.
Viewers laughed at this until all lights on the stage went out, leaving the whole gym curious and with no visibility for a moment. Then, out of nowhere a small light in the background of the stage came back on, highlighting very little and the students, still dressed in black, were standing. The beat of “Gangnam Style” came on and the students performed a co-ordinated dance.
According to Grade 6 students Kyanna Branco and Isabelle Rousseau, the teacher allowed the students to choose something different than the traditional songs usually played at these concerts since it is their last year in elementary school.
“This year is really different from last year,” Rousseau said.
According to them, the song was chosen by the male students of the class. “It’s their favourite, and it’s what they sing all the time,” Branco reported. “But it doesn’t matter ’cause it was really fun,” she finished.
Helping open the show was another Grade 6 class singing a traditional carol, a Grade 1-2 class singing to their piano-playing teacher and a Kindergarten class dressed in tutus.
Micheala Philpitt is a co-op student from Fellowes High School working at The Daily Observer.