The sounds of screaming and clapping were as loud as a rickety old roller coaster at an amusement park, but this wasn’t Funland down the shore. This was the auditorium at Emerson Junior-Senior High School, and it was a Talent Show for fourth through sixth graders. Louie Burke was one of 22 students who participated.
“I felt very scared at first when I first walked up, but then when the crowd cheered me and cheered my name, I knew that I was going to do a good job, and I started singing, and I just got into the groove of the song, and I just got more into the song, and I just did a better job as I progressed,” Burke said.
Burke sang “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay. He said he only practiced a couple of times, but he was very focused when doing so.
“When I first discovered [the song] I was like – Wow! – I really want to let the audience know that I love this song and I want to share it with other people and that was when I just, you know, got into the groove,” Burke said.
Student Congress members and advisers host the Talent Show for Patrick M. Villano School. Traditionally, the students have a smaller monthly show called the O Show, but this was different. It had bright spotlights and fancy introductions by Joseph Gibbs, the school’s band director.
“On stage I felt nervous. I wasn’t really sure if I would mess up or miss a line or, well, repeat a line or say a line before I’m supposed to say it,” Juliette Ignazzi, a fifth grader, said. She sang “Popular” from the movie Wicked.
Will Espinoza, another fifth grader, sang “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor.
“It felt good because when I went on stage I felt happy because I knew people were going to cheer for me,” Espinoza said.
At one point, Espinoza decided to hold the microphone toward the crowd, so they could sing.
“So when I did that it wasn’t planned at all. I saw Ethan [a fellow student] in the audience, and he was singing along to the song, and he was clapping and so I was like, okay, maybe I can take advantage of this, and so I held the mic out to let the other people sing,” Espinoza explained.
Mikey Sunga, Vida Greenberg, and Demi Paradis danced in the show. Others such as Evin Shelton, Jeremiah Mathew, Sophia Gonzalez, and Desmond White played an instrument.
“It was really cool to watch how other people performed and how they perform differently than I did,” Esponiza said, “but I still got to watch them perform in different ways. That was also really cool.”
