I have no delusions that attending an arts school will make my children either more likely or better prepared for a career in the arts (whether or not that is a comforting idea in the first place), but one of the tangible benefits for me as a parent is how enjoyable it is to visit the school for performances and the like.
Being an arts school, the teachers at Victoria are usually very conscious about things like staging and timing, especially the limited amount of time you often have to engage the attention and imagination of a diverse audience that probably has siblings as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles, caregivers et cetera.
The K-6 students staged their "Magic and Mayhem" concert Wednesday and Thursday night, which included Glory and her fifth grade cohort singing and dancing their way through "We Are the Brats", which positioned itself delicately between adorable and ominous. Cute grade 5 children in 'thuggish' looking denim or leather jackets supply the former, while lyrics like "there are five of you, but lots of us" supplied the latter. This is not even taking into consideration the fact that loud children's choruses are always a little intimidating, (c.f. "We don't need no education", et al.).
Prior to the girls coming to Vic, I would struggle to be attentive before and after the appearance of my own offspring, but the acts presented at Wednesday's concert were very decent, even those performed by the younger grades. Sure, they were often unpolished, and there is always unintentional comedy to be had (sometimes of the "now where the heck do you think he's off to then?" variety) but that is part of the allure, at least to me.
We also had a chance to view some of Glory's art projects from the year, like this self portrait,
...this colourful piece,
...this dark bit of business from a collage drawn onto old, damaged book pages,
...and my favourite, this depiction of Oma and Opa coming to Canada and starting a family.
She spent a fair bit of time and no small amount of thought on it, and I thought it turned out really well. If nothing else, their time at Vic will have given both girls some valuable tools for self expression which can be invaluable no matter what they end up doing in life.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment