by Claire Burnett, Current staff writer
On March 4th and 5th, Angel’s Network hosted their 24th annual talent show as a fundraiser for Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center. Usually the talent show is held in-person at the River Hill High School auditorium, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year it had to be fully virtual. Grace Jiang, a Vice President of Angel’s Network, added “We were initially unsure of whether we would even be able to hold a talent show. However, the talent show is a tradition of ours, and we wanted to continue giving the community an exciting event to look forward to.”
Open to all River Hill students, family, friends, and staff, the event was held for two nights through Google Meet where a video with all of the performances was presented. The performances consisted of many extraordinary acts involving singing, music, and dance. They ranged from the Blue Room Breaker’s breakdancing to Iris Zhan playing the guitar.
The talent show gave many people the opportunity to showcase their talents to the whole community and raise awareness for the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center. Kian Mostoufi, a soloist in River Hill’s a capella group, Hawkapella, commented “Overall I think it went really well and I was glad to be able to put out a performance like that.”
Upon signing up to watch the talent show, people were encouraged to donate money, with all of the proceeds going to Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center. During intermission, a representative from Grassroots spoke about their mission and how the pandemic has affected their services. Throughout the pandemic, Grassroots has been receiving an increased amount of calls and more people seeking help, so the money raised from the talent show can help benefit their center.
In between each performance, time was allotted for the judges to comment on the previous act and give compliments. Since the audience was virtual and could not clap or cheer after performances, they were able to give positive feedback and encourage performers using the Google Meet chat feature. Although they weren’t performing live, many performers were present in the Google Meet, so they were able to see the positive comments they received.
After the votes were counted and the judges conversed, the winners were revealed, broken down into four categories- best of dance, best of music, best of show, and people’s choice. To ensure the competition was based on talent rather than popularity, all of the winning categories except people’s choice were decided by the panel of judges. The people’s choice winner was determined based on the highest number of votes, so everyone in the audience was given a chance to fill out a Google Form to cast their vote.
For both night one and two, the winner for best of dance was the Blue Room Breakers, Nathan Zhong’s piano performance won best of music, and the Indian Fusion Dance group won people’s choice. The best of show winners were different both nights, with Matthew Zhou and Connie Chen’s piano duet winning on night one, and Ethan Vinodh’s piano performance winning on night two. Connie Chen, who won best of show along with Matthew Zhou in their piano performance, mentioned “I’m very grateful to have had this opportunity to share my music with everyone.”
After the talent show was over, Anya Nguyen, the Public Relations Manager of Angel’s Network, remarked “the talent show went extremely well, way better than any of us thought.” Since the talent show was virtual, the officers of Angel’s Network had to do something which has never been done for the talent show, which was creating a video with all of the performances. Luckily, on both nights of the talent show, they were able to play the video with minimal technical issues.
Although the virtual environment created some barriers with the talent show, Grace Jiang, a Vice President of Angel’s Network, recalled “the ‘hardest’ part was merely how new this whole process was”. She thought that the virtual talent show was less stressful than the in-person talent show, since there weren’t as many preparations and tasks that needed to be completed on the day of the talent show. Usually for the in-person talent show, they would have to count votes and find acts to perform.
In total, Angel’s Network raised $1,520 for Grassroots from talent show donations. Despite the virtual talent show being a new process this year, the Angel’s Network officer team was able to pull it off while raising money for Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center.