By Shayna Frost | Copy editor, Staff writer
More than 250 people turned out for Indian Trail’s 2014 annual talent show on March 21 in the school’s auditorium to watch some of ITHS&A’s finest performers take the stage.
The show contained a variety of acts: Irish dance, baton twirling, vocalists, beatboxing, hip-hop dance, and rapping. This year’s theme was “ITV” based off of MTV.
Before each act was a short video relating to each performance to give the “TV” feel. Cody Miilu, a Communications Academy senior, hosted the event. Katie Sciarra, multimedia and graphic design teacher, and Sandra Bleser, correlations of design and multimedia production instruction, put together a video of the staff at IT dancing to the song “Happy” by Pharrel Williams. The video played at the end of the talent show, right before winners were announced. Clips of the video aired on Good Morning America earlier that day, and can be seen on http:// gma.yahoo.com/videos.
Taking home first place, Taylor DeVincentis (a General Studies senior) and her boyfriend Kody Sullivan (a senior at Tremper High School) performed “Skinny Love” by Birdy, wowing the judges and audience. DeVincentis received $200, a crystal trophy, and a one-time two hourlong recording session with Skies Fall Recording Studios. DeVincentis is not a first time talent show performer; she has shown off her vocal skills in previous years, taking home third place in the 2013 show.
“I thought it was worth a shot to do it again this year and see if I could do better,” said DeVincentis.
“Skinny Love” wasn’t her first song choice.
“Kody made some comment about how I sounded really good with that song (Skinny Love) and that he loved that song,” DeVincentis said. “I was going to sing ‘Your song’ by Ellie Goulding. I’m really glad we chose Skinny Love though, I think it relates to me and our relationship with each other so it was a more meaningful song to perform in my mind.”
Coming in second place was rapper Joe Lindsey (a General Studies senior), with an original song dedicated to Indian Trail, which he had performed previously in the 2012 talent show.
“I had a blast! I definitely had confidence that I would get placed, with the amount of family and friends I had attending that Friday night,” said Lindsey.
Lindsey feels that he really connected with the audience.
“It was a wonderful feeling knowing that I was able to control the crowd and make them rock to my song. Although a song made about a school at first hand would come off corny, I still managed to get a different vibe,” he said.
As second-place winner, Lindsey received $100, a crystal trophy, and four tickets to the local Bristol Renaissance Faire.
In third place came Peter Wierzba, a General Studies senior, who performed original comedy and beat boxing.
This was Wierzba’s first time performing in the talent show, but he felt confident going in.
“I felt like I had a good chance to place due to the great crowd support I had,” said Wierzba. He received a crystal trophy along with $75.
Seventy percent of the voting came from the judges and 30 percent came from the audience; the audience could text in which act they wanted to win. The judges of the show were Libby Weisinger, Craig Bauer, Clara Tappa, and Cory Campagna. Indian Trail’s talent show ended up selling out of tickets.
“We had a much larger turnout than last year. We saw a lot of returning stu- dents,” Bleser said. “It looked like it was a big reunion this year. I think a lot of buzz from the video (‘Happy’ video) was what was the draw.”
Overall, Indian Trail’s talent show of 2014 was full of wonderful performances and an energetic audience.
“There was so much incredible talent this year and I really have so much re- spect for every other performer,” said DeVincentis.