Hillcrest High School

Today, HYM enjoyed a lovely visit to Hillcrest High School in the cool, hilly suburbs of Durban. After warming up and conducting the necessary rehearsals, the Park View Dancers and the Haringey Vox were taken to lessons by very welcoming students and were graciously accepted into two different lessons, some of which were Maths and the South African version of PSHE, which for one group was spent by the teacher recounting their visit to Glastonbury, as they had gone to see Kylie Minogue. It was interesting to know that the students had only just finished their Winter Holiday and were just coming back. After a nice lunch of freshly cooked lasagne, we did a few more run-throughs of all our various different songs, notably 'This Little Light of Mine' and 'Special Star', which involve most of us.

We then had a wonderful time performing in a concert to the Grade 8, 9 and 10s, which are equivalent to UK Year 9, 10 and 11 respectively. The students went wild when Vox performed popular songs such as Stormzy's 'Blinded by your Grace' and Stevie Wonder's 'Living for the City', and the Stage Band played 'Mra Khali', 'Sunny Side of the Street' and 'Red Clay'.

Our wonderful Tyrone Lowe did a little singing workshop with everyone in the audience, and had them singing most of Vox's normal warm-ups, assisted by Vox themselves, as well as a really fun call and response, called 'I don't know what you came to do', which involves stamping and clapping.

The students notably enjoyed the dancers, who performed their complicated choreography to the utmost standard. Their two routines involve perfectly synchronised dancing, which is extremely accurate and follows the backing music to perfection, without even the slightest intervention from their teachers, Miss Malcolm and Cynthia. 

The only flaw with this performance was that David Tims got the microphones muddled and kept turning them off! Naughty David!

At the end of the performance, Ben from Vox was bombarded by HHS female students, who saw him as a bit of a heart-throb, despite the fact that he absolutely hates attention!

Afterwards, we came back to our various very nice host families, and at most, the swimming pool was utilised by most people, however cold it was! We had a lot of fun. At one particular home, a few others walked down the road to their friends and had a nice afternoon jumping into the freezing pool followed by a delicious barbecue.

Author: Stanley Hapgood