As Raffles American School (RAS) continues to grow in Anjung, awaiting the move to the school’s 46-acre campus in January 2016, RAS students and teachers have been challenged by the school’s current facility limitation. What they have discovered is that even though they don’t have a black box, dance studios, or a state-of-the-art theater, not having these facilities does not hold them back in the least!
All you need is an open space, some black satin fabric and wire, inspired, visionary teachers and can-do, grounded students. RAS’ co-curricular showcase, Sampling the Arts, showed us all just how bursting with talent the school is.
Sampling the Arts at RAS
The show began with an innovative, theatrical version of The Enormous Crocodile, by Roald Dahl. Students played jungle animals, using voice production to develop their animal’s unique character voice, and dressed in tutus, detailed masks, neon lips and shimmering facepaint. Staging crew used simple yet effective props, such as a few palm fronds and their body, and massive piece of yellow painted cardboard, and bolts of cloth to depict a palm tree, the sun, and a muddy river.
The beginner aerial silks sections performed “A Pop of Color”. The piece began with students flipping the silks back and forth to conceal and reveal each other. Standing poses, a heart-stopping flip, and a student’s own invention, the “Ninja Kick”, followed, to end the piece with silly, upside down poses from the entire group. The next solo piece, danced by one of our advanced aerial students, featured sweeping movements, daring drops, and upside down balances that caused the audience to squirm in anticipation.
The band and voice groups sang some classic holiday tunes as stage crew got ready to set up our Musical Theater numbers “I Can Do That” from A Chorus Line, and “What is this Feeling?” from Wicked. While the latter was very much the upbeat, witty and hilarious original duet we all know and love from the show, “I Can Do That” was a unique version that used three characters: a tapper, a ballerina, and a jazz dancer.
The culmination of the night were dance pieces, two solos and a group piece, all from our RAS Dance Company. This group piece, entitled “Embrace”, explored our school environment and relationships with each other, and the idea that if you truly embrace Raffles American School, RAS would embrace you in return, an embrace that, if you let it, would stay with you the rest of your life.
