The Visual and Performing Arts Festival and Founder's Day
Once again, the Visual and Performing Arts Festival week gave us the chance to see the many talents, interests, teamwork and community spirit of our students and staff at work. There were a number of performance events last week that provided a showcase for the multiple musical and dancing talents of our students and staff: Performance Corner, the Gig night, the Music Showcase and the boarding free mic night, featuring a wide array of acts and giving both boarders and boarding staff a very entertaining evening.
The final day of the VPA festival was Founder's Day on Saturday morning, which was also the first anniversary of the official opening of our new campus last year. The first part of the day involved all the students and most of the staff in a wide variety of workshops based on the theme of Survival. Among the 30+ workshop activities available were building a shelter out of newspaper, analysing your biological fitness for survival, recreating the image of Théodore Géricault's famous painting Raft of the Medusa (1818-19) and achieving the title "last man standing" on a physical obstacle course.
After the two consecutive workshop sessions, we all assembled in the gym at 11:30 for the Founder's Day Performances, including prospective students and parents who will be joining DHSZ next year. There were a number of excellent and entertaining student performances during the assembly by choir, Glee and the Performing Arts Drama group.
It was also the final round of this year's talent show and the judges, Mr. Yim, Ms. Zhu and Ms. Jones, had a difficult decision to make in choosing one out of the three final performances by the band Spotlight, the solo rap artist Lucy C and the X-Face Dancers. In the end, they chose the X-Face Dancers as this year's Talent Show winners. Congratulations to them and to the other two finalists for outstanding performances. Thanks to the many students and, in particular, the dedicated VPA Ambassadors who committed so much energy and organisation into this event and made the 2017 Visual and Performing Arts Festival such a great success. Thank you, too, to the teachers who supported them and especially to Ms. Dorrington for her hard work in coordinating the whole Founder's Day programme. And a big thank you to all of the support staff, teachers and students, who supported, participated in and organised different aspects of the festival.
