Talent Show

We did make it to the All Island Talent Show. Some will say it was a flagrant attempt to get blog material. I say, “So what.” It was a happening. A community event perhaps like no other. A hodge podge of eclectic entertainment. We had singers, fiddlers, dancers, poets, documentary film makers and even a bagpiper in full regalia. There were high notes and low notes and missed notes. There were child performers and grandmas dancing with their grandchildren. And, in the end, there was some actual talent. I love these kind of affairs. It’s like something you’d see in a travelogue. More like a family get together than a real show. But, a lot of effort went into the evening. First of all, there were sets, cardboard flats with a Mediterranean style villa forming a procineum. There were little cardboard clouds floating above the stage and a Grandma Moses style mural providing background—pastel hills with leaping goats and little fishies swimming beneath the sea. We were in the very useful Beach School gym which that morning had been the scene for a dance class and by Sunday will be transformed back into a baskeball court. We were the first audience members to arrive. Paid our twenty bucks at the door and had our hands stamped, an unusual precaution, I thought. How many people would really attempt to crash the All Island Talent Show?  We had our pick of seats and waited as the crowd slowly formed. It was like time lapse photography and its equivalent in sound. As we got closer to 7:30 the sound level increased as did the energy in the room. We began with a rousing dance number led by three high school girls, one of whom we have noticed before, and who could be a finalist in America’s Next Top Model contest. Much of the audience was on their feet dancing in the aisles. Deb the Pie Lady was the MC, nervous but brassy as she introduced a series of acts. It would be unfair to critique or comment on them one by one. But I will note that at intermission we ran into Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul who were there scouting talent. Randy felt most of the singers were a bit pitchy but Paula thought they were beautiful in their personal expressions. Whatever their level of ability, each performer was earnest in presentation and the audience was wildly supportive.
It was fun to watch the interaction. There were lots of kids in attendance and many babies. Tumbling mats had been spread on the floor in front of the small stage. Grade school kids, mostly girls clustered stage left. High school kids, virtually all girls, were clumped together stage right. These children were clearly all friends and probably had been before even grade school. They had a sense of their place in the world that manifested in confidence and feelings of security radiated from those who made it to the stage. After the performances by high school girls they would be met by a line of hugs from their friends who had rushed from the mats to greet them. If you had performed abysmally, you wouldn’t have a clue. Love flowed freely.
For quite a long time I was certain that Alex “the Russian” Goldberg was going to steal the show. Alex is apparently from Russia and the houseguest of an island family while he attends an Irish dance class in Bellingham. He did a River Dance kind of thing with lots of high kicks, hands on hips poses and pouty looks. In the second act he came back as Michael Jackson with a collection of spins and some moonwalking and got the audience stirred up. He was followed by a local poet accompanied by a very good muscian improvising backup and read a poem called Magnetic North about how we are made up of salt water and the world is made mostly of salt water and when he needs regeneration he goes down to the water. It was a good poem which is always a relief because listening to a bad poem is like fingernails on a blackboard and I particularly like the way he worked in the shipwrecked sailor Don who I blogged about last December (you can check the archives if you are really interested). The final piece was a documentary film on Martin Luther King by a local kid who won second prize in the History Day competition. I liked the idea of adding a film to the All Island Talent Show but I wouldn’t have made it the finale. The real finale proceeded the film. A native of the island sang a Stevie Wonder song, Do I Do. It’s a hard song. Lots of Stevie Wonder songs are hard to sing. Do I Do has that really fast riff in it that goes “Yes I got some candy kisses for your lips
Yes I got some honey suckle chocolate dripping kisses full of love for you.” This gal nailed it. She was in control. The master of her voice and keyboard. It was worth the wait. There is some real talent on the island.