This year’s Family Concert, given by the local professional string orchestra SouthDowns Camerata, directed by Sara Deborah Timossi, was titled ‘Dancing through the Movies’ and lived up to its name in an hour of delightful music and dance equally appealing to all ages in the capacity audience – no doubt including, for many of the younger children, their first experience of a live orchestra.
After a welcome from Festival chair Pamela Buckley, the players struck up with the ‘Strictly’ theme and 14 young dancers from the MD Dance Academy in a rainbow of brilliant-coloured costumes ran out into the hall, and danced in a circle round the band – an ingenious use of space that also gave each their chance in the lime-light.
Before the next piece, compere Steve Sargent introduced the four groups of string instruments – violin viola, cello and double bass – and also the individual trumpet, piano and percussion players brought in to supplement the strings for the occasion. (The children would perhaps have enjoyed hearing more from them, particularly the trumpet).
Steve went on to introduce a narrative that linked all the musical numbers – a fairy tale of young Mia and the squirrel Zigzag, who would be her guide through a day’s adventures.
The first step was out of the town into a magic wood where we heard Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ waltz, and then the lights changed to tropical warmth for several tangos, stylishly executed by the dancers – particularly the lead couple, whose frame and head movements would surely have impressed those ‘Strictly’ judges. The younger dancers were paired with each other, and then with older dancers – charming to see, and an ideal way of passing on skills through the group.
The story took us next to the high seas, for music from Pirates of the Caribbean, when piano and percussion added their energy to the mix; the children loved it, caught up in the music and cheering at the end.
For the Harry Potter theme, Steve invited children from the audience to conduct and had several takers who kept remarkably good time. As the concert progressed, the younger children seemed to lose interest in the story line, but not in the music, especially when the dancers returned for Duke Ellington’s jazzy number ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing’.
There was more variety in store, when the whole audience were invited to join in singing ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight?’, led by soloists Steve and Rahel-Sofia Timossi – a player from the orchestra’s young musician programme.
Then came the exuberant ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’, making the audience sit up with the excitement of drums and trumpet and a final turn from the dancers. It had to be encored – with children and parents from the audience invited down to dance in a Pied-Piper-like stream round the players.
It made a perfect finale to a well-planned and thoroughly engaging programme which – having been billed as lasting an hour – ended bang on time.
Philip Young
