Palmer, Wasilla high schools stage talent shows Jan. 31

MAT-SU — Students at Palmer and Wasilla high schools have one more week of rehearsals left before they will showcase their talents for the community.

The performances won’t be as combustible as students had hoped, but both talent nights are set for 7 p.m., Jan. 31. And the Palmer show repeats Feb. 1.

Wasilla High choir and piano teacher Sara Guhl said that’s because Principal Amy Spargo shot down a proposal from one group of students seeking to perform with flaming swords.

There will be no flames and no swords, Guhl said. Instead, they are using sticks. Not flaming sticks. Just sticks, she said.

“Palmer’s Got Talent” is planned in the Palmer High School Theater and tickets are $5 at the door.

Stan Harris, who heads the music and drama department at Palmer High, said the show is an opportunity for students who don’t ordinarily participate in music or drama to showcase their talents. He said the talent show returned last year after a long hiatus.

Harris said that show was so successful they decided to make it an annual event.

Performances include skits, dance numbers, several rock bands, a mashup of pop songs performed by two sisters and a young man who has found a way to dance with himself.

Harris said the student recorded himself dancing. That video will be played back during the talent show and the student will dance with the video version of himself.

He said the show brings students to his stage he didn’t know previously.

“It’s an opportunity to show off kids that aren’t ordinarily in our performances and to show off kids who are in different ways,” Harris said.

Some of the funds raised through the two-night performance will help a group of Palmer students travel to a jazz festival in Washington just before spring break, he said.

“It will be good fun,” Harris said.

In Wasilla, the “Bistro Night Talent Show” is planned in the commons area at the school and will be combined with a student art show. Admission of $5 and includes Kaladi Brothers coffee and dessert.

Guhl said it’s the second year her students staged this fundraiser; one of several that will help send a group of WHS students to New York City during spring break to participate in a nine-day musical festival.

Their packed itinerary includes an opera performance, hearing the New York Philharmonic, a performance of “Stomp” and trips to various museums and art galleries.

Guhl said students from Colony High School are traveling to the same festival and the two choirs will collaborate in some festivals and performances at New York area churches.

“A couple of the kids haven’t been out of the state,” Guhl said.

She said her music students work toward a trip like this once every two years.

“In two years we’d like to go to Europe, or the Bahamas,” she said.

Two years prior, Guhl took a group of students to California, and immediately began planning the New York trip.

She said the music festival brings together the best of the best from across the U.S.

“There’s music all over the place,” Guhl said of their lodging in Manhattan near the festival.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.