Several talented Tri-City teens as well as those representing the Coquitlam District Music Festival (CDMF) are on Vancouver Island this week for the Performing Arts BC provincials.
The annual competition for top students in music, dance and speech/dramatic arts started Sunday in Nanaimo, and the winners' names will be announced tomorrow (Thursday).
Among the local contingent are three students from Coquitlam's danceLAB: Lex Burnham, 15, of Coquitlam, who qualified after winning the intermediate stage dance category at the Surrey Festival of Dance; Kristina Akester, 16, of Coquitlam, who won the senior stage dance at the Chilliwack Lions' Club Festival; and Samantha Sadler, 17, of Port Moody, who took the senior modern dance at the same event.
Matisse Maitland, 14, of Coquitlam and a student of the Tri-City Dance Centre in Coquitlam, is the provincial delegate for the Chilliwack Lions' Club Festival in intermediate stage dance.
And Port Moody's Caulfield School of Dance has four students in the provincial event: Ben Freemantle, 16, of Port Moody, who clinched the highest markets in all five of his ballet and modern/contemporary dance categories at the Pacific West Performing Arts Festival in Burnaby (he will represent the Surrey Festival of Dance for ballet, 16 and over, at the provincials); Lauren Phillips, 13, of PoMo, the current provincial champion for voice/musical theatre, who qualified at Pac West for voice/musical theatre, 18 and under; Madison Simms, 13, of PoCo, who will represent CDMF in voice/classical, 14 and under; and Tiana Jung, 13, of PoMo, a voice/musical theatre competitor in the 14 and under division after winning at the Kiwanis Fraser Valley Festival.
Meanwhile, from the CDMF that happened earlier this year in Port Coquitlam and - like other festivals - fielded hundreds of entries from all over the Lower Mainland, the provincial delegates are:
for strings, Chloe Kim, Trisha Doo, Winnie Liao, Rebecca Jung and Aglimente;
for speech, Gemma Blokzyl, Preston Lim and Adeline Cui;
for piano, Amy Yu, Jodie Ziong, Vivian Sham and Andre Poon;
for musical theatre, Emily Amaral and Emma Irvine;
and for voice, Simms and Emmanuelle Lyon.
Thelka Wright, a CDMF co-ordinator who is also on the Performing Arts BC board of directors, said this year's CDMF delegates will likely do well. "We got really good feedback from our adjudicators who were amazed at the high standard, especially for instrumental," she said.
Still, Wright said the economic downturn has been felt by all regional festival organizers, who have seen either fewer entries or students who have chosen not to compete in as many categories as in past years; the lack of provincial funding also has been an issue "and many festivals have been struggling or have just simply quit due to financial difficulties," Wright said.
Founded in 1964, Performing Arts BC is a non-profit group that acts as an umbrella organization for some 30 regional performing arts festivals that see more than 32,000 young musicians, dancers and dramatic artists.
Winners from the regional festivals advance to the provincials, where they compete and can participate in a range of master classes and workshops; the best musicians move on to the national music festival. Next year's Performing Arts BC provincials will be held in Chilliwack.
