Photo - Senior winner, Olivia (Year 7, Hepburn)
By Mrs Axford (Assistant Head)
House Talent is one of my favourite events of the Year because it involves every student from Years 3 right through to the Upper Sixth. One of the main aims for each House is to try to win the Cup for the best House Song but in addition there are also Cups for the Best Junior and Senior acts and an Overall House Talent Cup.
The House Talent Cup is awarded to the House with the highest number of points added together from points for every audition, additional points for Acts which were Highly Commended, Finalists and Winners of the Junior, Senior and House Song categories.
I could not believe that the last time we managed to do a live House Talent competition was in 2019 and therefore this year’s competition felt particularly poignant. I loved judging all the auditions over the last half term. There were nearly 200 entries with everything from magic tricks, skipping, playing the piano blindfolded to the more traditional singing, musical, gymnastic and dancing acts.
In the Junior category Phoebe Hadingham (Year 5,Chanel ) stole the show telling a joke with her sock puppet Melody, but in the end the judges - former BGS Head of Dance, Mrs Winter, and her daughter, Sophie Winter, awarded Minu Sooraj (Year 6, Chanel) first place with her traditional Indian Dance.
The competition for the best Senior performance was very tough. There were some outstanding performances from Anastasiia Paniushkina (Lower Sixth, Hepburn) who played Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio on the piano, Ishani Patel (Upper Sixth, Parks) with her beautiful South Indian Classical dance and Isla Campbell (Year 10, Franklin) who sang her own composition Changing. However, the Senior winner this year was Olivia Deverill (Year 7, Hepburn) with her outstanding performance of Quiet from the musical Matilda.
The special part of House Talent are the House Songs where every single person in each House takes part. They were all very impressive but in the end it was Chanel who won the top spot with The Greatest Showman. The judges felt that this performance had the ‘Wow’ factor with creativity and costumes and fabulous engagement and energy from everyone throughout.
When all the House Points were added up from each entry audition, highly commended acts and points for making the finals plus the winners of each category the points for the House Talent Cup were as follows:
Parks - 245
Nightingale - 261
Franklin - 267
Austen - 309
Hepburn - 394
Chanel - 494
There was so much excitement in the final Whole School House Assembly of the term as the House Talent results were revealed. Only when Olivia Deverill sang her winning piece again for the Whole School, could you have heard a pin drop in the Sports Hall before Avani Tambe (Chanel House Captain) collected the Cup and the students headed out towards the Dining Room for their Christmas lunch.
View photos here.
