The students start the performance wearing leather jackets and aviator sunglasses and when the music starts Rome Middle School’s Show Choir, Grand Illusion, takes the audience on a journey for the roughly 20-minute show.
On Monday morning, the crew staged a performance for elementary school students at Rome High School’s Performing Arts Center in preparation for their first competition of the season on Friday at the Diamond Classic in Albertville, Alabama.
The students have been hard at work on singing, dancing, choreography, and more and can’t wait to get on the competition stage.
For those unfamiliar with show choir, the group of boys and girls perform several songs over a 20-minute span, singing and dancing. The show typically has an overall theme. Those shows are often thought up and put together well in advance of the season.
“Mrs. (JoAnna) Parker and I came up with the theme. We knew that we wanted to do something that had to do with different types of travel. We looked up all kinds of different songs as far as driving and flying and traveling on a boat, on a train, stuff like that,” Grand Illusion Director Lacy Dockery said. “It's kind of like planes, trains, and automobiles. We just kind of put them together, put our ideas together, and we constructed the show.”
While audiences are just now getting a chance to see the whole show, the group began working on it in the summer.
“We started working on it in late July before school started back. We had a full week of choreography camp and really singing as well,” Dockery said “So they've been doing all these songs since July. It has definitely been intense.”
The award-winning group has several competitions on tap for the season, including Friday’s at Albertville as well as trips to Opelika and Auburn, Alabama and Nashville.
“It starts up now. They are nervous, but also excited. There's actually a lot of our group that has never done anything like this before, so it's definitely going to be an exciting and new experience for them,” Dockery said. “A lot of them have never even gone that far on a bus before, so this is a really great experience for them. Even though we went last year, it's still going to be new experiences and everything for this year.”
When asked about the favorite part of the show, Dockery defers to Parker, the group’s choreographer as well as a mom to one of the members.
“ My favorite part about the whole show is the excitement they have leading into getting started and the smiles on their faces when they’re finished,” Parker said. “It's so overwhelming because they've worked so hard since July, and they're my babies. Seeing them so excited is the most rewarding thing. It's better than winning the Super Bowl. All we want them to do is just smile and have fun and be proud that they finished.”
The group will also perform at the Three Rivers Show Choir Competition at Rome High School on Saturday, Feb. 22 as well as the close-out show at the city auditorium on March 13.
But for now, the group is eagerly awaiting the next few weeks of competition with big smiles on their faces as they get ready to take audiences along for a journey.