Afternoon of wartime nostalgia, entertainment
An almost full Dannevirke Town Hall rewarded the Dannevirke Community Board for hosting its second Anzac Day concert on April 25.
The audience was thoroughly entertained with a huge variety of items — 30 — as soloists, duetists, choirs, dance groups and speech and drama groups all conveyed either messages pertaining to Anzac or items celebrating their skills and talent.
Wartime nostalgia took the form of dance and speech items like Letters From the War by the Melissa Martin Academy of Dance and Voices from Gallipoli by Evolve Speech and Drama while the choirs performed songs from the wartime era. The rendition of In Flanders Fields by the Viking Choir arousing haunting memories, Lions Pride telling about D-Day Dodgers, the Choir of Norsewood belting out Anchors Away and L’s Belles literally Hanging Out The Washing on the Siegfried Line.
A wonderful selection of talented youngsters sang, recited and danced their way through the afternoon demonstrating the huge reservoir of talent just waiting for an opportunity like this concert to display the results of much coaching and practice.
A particular acknowledgement must be made of the children’s groups Te Kura Kaupapa O Tamaki Nui A Rua, Evolve Speech and Drama and Cindy’s Children’s Group. They enchanted the audience and just as importantly they introduced youngsters to the stage for the first time who seemed very much at home there — no minor achievement in front of an audience of roughly 400.
A beautiful opening of Pokarekareana by Audrey Littlejohn and a wonderful conclusion to the items of White Cliffs of Dover by Cindy O’Sullivan were like attractive well-illustrated book covers and the contents — the rest of the show — lived up to that expectation.
The pictures tell only half the story.