Activity Backstage At The Competitions

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28896, 16 May 1959, Page 2

Activity Backstage At The Competitions

The steady rain and the disagreeable weather of the first week of the school holidays may be a nightmare to most mothers, but to the mothers of children participating in the Christchurch competitions it is not so bad. “The competitions are the answer to wet weather holiday problems,” a group of mothers said backstage at the Civic theatre on Thursday. “These wet days would be murderous otherwise.” As it is, the competitions absorb their children who are excited, hard-working, intent on their daily routines and thoroughly entertained. “Fish and chip week,” we call it, said several mothers who meet every year at this time. Fish and chips are the main item for the week’s meals, with little time between events for “competition mothers” to attend to shopping, cooking and other household chores. Two mothers were sewing on sequins in one corner of a dressing room; another mother was sewing her eight-year-old daughter into her costume for the under 12 song and tap dance in costume. “This is her last year’s dress and she is a little fatter this year,” her mother explained, sewing up the bulging seam. Practising

In the meantime a variety of fairytale young people from cowgirls to rainbows were practising their steps, going over the lines of their songs and shivering with anticipation before their entrances. A “newsboy” went trundling by with his props—a news stand and bill board. His teacher admonished him: “Remember, don’t race now—listen for the beat of the music.” The newsboy gave her a withering look.

The mother of a small “bride” who was going over her comedy wedding song, was pointing her toes and stretching her arms to encourage her daughter to do her act with conviction. Other mothers were coaching with “da-da-de-da-da’s;” some were making up their daughters and telling them to stop fidgetting; others were trying to allay bouts of stage fright. “I can’t sing for nuts,” a small girl in top hat and tails who was soon to be “painting the clouds with sunshine,” said dispiritedly. “Of course you can dear—you’ll be fine when you get on,” her mother assured her. AU these children were entries in the song and tap dance in costume for children under 12.

Piano accompanists having a cup of tea in the committee room back stage described some of the tears and laughter that are part and parcel of competition time. “The little ones often forget when they get before the footlights and give you beseeching looks to help them out,” an accompanist of several years* standing said. It is then that the accompanist comes to the rescue and fills in or ad libs until the child regains composure or begins again. “It is the mothers breathing down my neck that bother me,” another said. The mothers were so intent on helping the child to do well that they went through the motions of the dance in the wings as the child performed. Others sing the melody while hanging over the pianist, grip their shoulders and ask them to slow down, and in general give more than generous guidance,” accompanists said goodnaturedly “Post-mortems” by the mothers on the results of the events and the way the performers conducted themselves formed an integral part of the show, mothers said, admitting that differences of opinion became heated at times. Many of

the children were obviously “old hands” at the competitions and had reached the nonchalant stage, stage. Several girls in the under 16 Scottish dancing contests said they had been in competitions since they were four, eight or nine. Most were now about 14. As the two first entrants in the sailors’ hornpipe took the stage and the bagpipes struck up, eight other sailor girls as one, went into their dance in the wings, practising frantically their rope-climb-ing, and looking out to sea. It was easy to imagine the truth of one young girl’s statement: “No, Mum doesn’t come because she can’t stand the noise of the bagpipes,” on hearing that the piper had been playing all day for the series.

Before the classical ballet, young ballerinas were limbering up dressed in pretty bouffant dresses and glittering coronets. Rosettes were being arranged in silky, hard-to-fix young hair; a wail came from one corner when a metal coronet was found squashed; last-minute repairs were being made to a popped placket and excitement ran high when the call-boy announced “half a minute to go.” When the curtain rose and five pairs of ballerinas glided on to the stage to the strains of a Chopin waltz, nobody in the audience (who had not been through the mill) would have realised the chaos and tenseness which was evident a few minutes before behind the scenes.