What a fantabulous and awesometastic weekend!  As a newbie to Viva Acappella I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at our retreat education weekend, but I did know that there would be lots of hard work and hard playing involved and I certainly wasn’t disappointed!

Having just chartered to Sweet Adeline’s Region 31, the main focus of the weekend was to add finesse to our two competition songs for our debut on the Sweet Adelines competition stage in May.

We’re all so excited about competing, and with a mix of very experienced barbershoppers and those completely new to the craft, a key part of the weekend was ensuring everyone understood what to expect at a competition, and what it takes to really perform a song!

As well as working hard on the vocal performance and practicing our target vowels and diphthongs (amazing how hard it is to get everyone to say CAAOOOOW), we were put through our paces by Helen on matching our physical and emotional performance to what we were doing vocally.

I certainly had a shock to the system when I thought I was exaggerating when performing and then saw the video of myself looking wooden and partly dead… It really did show us that every individual counts and how much you have to abandon your self-consciousness and give it your all to communicate to an audience.

It’s also surprising how white and ghostly we looked standing on the risers, a very good reason to have our “making up is hard to do” lesson by Chris. Linda was volunteered for this and she looked so glam with fluttery false eyelashes, as well as showing us how much makeup really needs applying to make you look human under stage lights!

Another key part of the weekend was team building and working together as an effective group.

It really makes you realise why you choose to sing barbershop when the tag of a ballad makes your arm hairs stand on end and you can feel the collective emotion building in the group. There’s nothing quite like it when you put together a very talented director and the vocals, performance and commitment of each individual singer as we did towards the end of the weekend! I for one am very proud to be a member of Viva Acappella and can’t wait for Newcastle!

Em C

(off to practice dipthongs, and expressive eyebrows)

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