District choral & dance festivals take over Bell Performing Arts Centre this month
If you build it, they will sing and dance!
That’s the spirit of this year’s District Choral Festival (April 15-18) and District Dance Festival (April 22-26 & 29) as thousands of Surrey and White Rock students build themselves up through live, artistic expression on the Bell Performing Arts Centre stage.
“Choir and dancing are wonderful ways to build confidence, build community and build a sense of pride in your school,” said Tricia Liversidge, Arts Education helping teacher. “We’re also rebuilding some of the choral programs at the secondary level as choir took a hit during the pandemic, but we’re on pace to get more students involved this year.
“Singing is one of the most natural things we do, we sing everything when our kids are little. It’s a nice feeling to know we can sing things again with students and that is showing in the response to the festivals.”
The District Choral Festival features 25 choirs and more than 1,200 students of almost all grade levels. While previous years have separated elementary and secondary students into their own choral festivals, Liversidge said they decided to “bridge the gap” between elementary and secondary programs this year.
As a result, primary students such as AJ McLellan Elementary’s Grade 2-3 choir will get the chance to see performances by the likes of Johnston Heights Secondary’s Grade 9-12 choir and Tamanawis Secondary’s Grade 8-12 choir. Additionally, the festival lent itself to some cross-school collaboration, with Berkshire Park and Royal Heights elementary schools performing with a combined choir from the schools.
Similarly, the District Dance Festival has long offered collaborative opportunities between elementary and secondary schools, and this year’s event is no exception, with Grandview Heights Secondary students performing alongside the neighbouring Pacific Heights Elementary dance class at this year’s festival.
“There are some really great mentorship opportunities that have emerged,” said Liversidge. “École Salish has some teams registered to perform but they also wanted to be in the same session as two of their feeder schools because they have students going from Salish to the elementary schools to teach dance.
“The secondary students are absolutely loving being able to work with classes at the elementary level.”
The District Dance Festival is set to be one of the biggest in recent memory, with 4,986 students participating across 154 different dance groups. Liversidge thanked the teachers and staff for all of their work to prepare for such a monumental festival, with six days of performances.
“I am so appreciative of the support and opportunities that the teachers are providing to students,” she said. “It’s a lot of extra work and planning and time and I really do appreciate that they are that committed to providing these artistic opportunities for students.
“It’s such a phenomenal thing to see and I really appreciate the creativity.”
The dates and times are as follows:
District Choral Festival
- April 15-16, 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
- April 17, 10:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
- April 18, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
District Dance Festival
- April 22-26 & 29, 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
