CA: A Year In Review

CA: A Year In Review

Wow! What a year it has been for #TeamCA! As we start a new term in just a few short weeks, we thought it would be nice to reflect on all the amazing things we did throughout the last academy year.

New Classes, New Faces

In September 2018 we kicked off our new term and this also meant some brand new classes – Jazz, Fitness, Acro and Commercial – and brand new teachers in the form of Miss Jo, Miss Emily, Reece and Misha to join the existing team. We were even joined by former student Tom Atkinson who ran an 8 week intensive acting course!

We are delighted to welcome back Miss Grace from September this year to take over Commercial classes on a Thursday and Miss Rhiannon for Saturday morning as Miss Emily will be off enhancing her training at the prestigious ‘Performers College’ – good luck Em! We will miss you!

NODA Awards

Wow! What an amazing year we had at The Sound of Musical Theatre Company (again!) and we were thrilled to have received a staggering 13 NODA nominations for our 2018 productions of Sister Act and Joseph.

SISTER ACT
Best Actor Female – Deloris – Emilia Jurin – WON!
Best Supporting Actor Male – Monsignor O’Hara – Conor James
Best Supporting Actor Female – The Nuns – Megan Hill, Erin James, Catherine McGinty, Erin Bannister & Kaitlin Hopcroft – WON!
Best Director – Joe Appleton – WON!
Best Musical Director – Joe Appleton
Best Choreography – Sarah Cosgrove
Best Youth Production

JOSEPH
Best Actor Male – Joseph – Callum Mann
Best Actor Female – The Narrators – Erin Bannister & Erin James
Best Director – Joe Appleton
Best Musical Director – Joe Appleton
Best Choreography – Sarah Cosgrove & Amy Appleton
Best Ensemble Production – WON!

  

We were then put forward and received 4 North West NODA nominations. Huge congratulations to Emilia Jurin who won Best Actress for her performance as Deloris in Sister Act.

Saturday Night Fever

We were so lucky to see our former student Owen Broughton taking the lead in Saturday Night Fever on it’s professional tour! #ProudTeacherMoment

MoveIT 2019!

We had a fab time at MoveIT 2019 where our students took part in loads of new and innovative classes, some of our girls had their first pointe shoe fittings AND we got to watch Miss Emily and Megan Burgeen on the main stage with Preston’s College.

Kaitlyn Pinder got offered a free place at the ballet Easter school at Masters. Nick Godfrey and Emily G-B were offered places at the VA tap masterclass, and Megan Hill and Emilia Jurin were scouted by Dance Box (to name but a few!)

We are so pleased that so many of our students were scouted for colleges and offered places at masterclasses, but we’re mainly so proud of all their performances in their classes, and attitudes all weekend – they are an absolute credit. Bring on next year!

Collabro Performance

Once again, some of our Pop Choir students were selected to sing alongside Collabro as part of their tour. We had a brilliant time singing with them at the Winter Gardens Opera House on the 23rd February #CollabroChoirs

And here’s a sneaky peak of one of our own, singing a snippet from one of her favourite musicals to a packed out Opera House. Well done Megan!

Musical Theatre

Following our two ‘fabulous, baby’ 2018 performances of Sister Act and Joseph, we revealed that The Sound of Musical Theatre Company would be taking on the iconic broadway musical ‘West Side Story’ and gee! were our students up to the challenge!

We had a great time in rehearsals and even managed to sneak some of our principal cast out one Saturday afternoon to film this awesome promo (thanks to our legendary Esme!)

Thank you so much to everyone involved and thank you to everyone who came to see us perform! If you didn’t make it, well shame on you! Here’s what you missed.

But there’s no sitting still for us! Rehearsals for our next production ‘CHICAGO’ have already started (shameless plug – tickets are already on sale – there’s even a sneaky discount if you book before the end of September!) and straight after that, we start rehearsing for ‘SUMMER HOLIDAY’ and we can’t wait!

Competitions and Workshops

2019 saw some new opportunities for our students to enhance their performance skills. The 3rd February saw our amazing Commercial girls win FIRST place at HipHopUK Blackpool, with Megan also scooping FIRST place for her freestyle solo. Then on the 9th June our girls were escorted to HipHopUK Manchester where they came 4th… plus Megan achieved 1st in her freestyle solo, Evie came 2nd and Cat came 3rd! Well done to all of you, and of course to Miss Em for choreographing! See a little snippet of one of the routines here.

We also wanted to put together an exciting timetable of workshops, covering a wide range of styles for all ages and abilities and we invited in external practitioners to workshop stage combat, commercial dance, ballet, tap, acting and musical theatre.

Welcome Theodore James!

On Thursday 11th July we wished Miss Sarah and Michael a huge congratulations on the birth of their beautiful boy Theodore James, 8lb 2oz. Brother and sister Toby and Ruth were absolutely over the moon with the new arrival (as were mum and dad, obviously!) We’re sure it wont be long before Theo joins his siblings in class – although we hope he has inherited mum’s dance skills, no offence dad!

Annual Showcase… oh wait, there were two!

As we said before, 2018-2019 was all about focusing on and improving the skill of performing. Therefore we added an extra show to our calendar and this year saw two productions – CA:Presents in February and CA:Showcase in July, 3 performances each at Lowther. Both were a roaring success and great fun to be apart of. As always, good luck to our ‘graduating’ students – not that you need it! – we will miss you so please come back and see us soon!

You’ll see from our term dates page that we are back to our usual July Showcase for 2020 (Friday and Saturday only – with a matinee on the Saturday, so we still have 3 performances). You will see we are putting on two musical theatre productions in 2020 and we are also scheduling our ISTD examinations for April.

We are so excited for this year, and can’t wait to see what 2019-20 holds for CA and our wonderful students. We’ve already got some awesome things lined up, read all about them here.

If you are interested in taking new classes from September, check out our timetable and let us know before term starts.

See you soon!

Team CA x