“I was really excited to see Young DaDaFest: Perform due to the sheer amount of excitement there was building up to it. The show had been sold-out for a while and having seen Young DaDaFest: Music the week before, the bar was set pretty high. Sam from RAWD opened up the show and warmed up the crowd nicely. His jokes were top notch and his good mood was infectious. He even managed to get the crowd literally scratching each other in no time, which helped introduce the theme in a clever way.
First up was the Drop In group consisting of YEP Drop In members and Young DaDaFest graduates, which made for a very exciting performance. The trio performed a short yet powerful piece about being online in the digital age. By the end of the performance, the audience were engrossed in how the narrative had played out. My favourite moment in particular was Chris’ angry face as well as the whole group’s reactions to what they saw online.
Next up was the Champions Group, who are made up of three schools and have been working together to raise awareness about access. Even though there were different schools mixed together, you wouldn’t be able to tell as they were all comfortable with one another. They showed the audience a video of their latest work with Hope University about fast and slow thinking, and performed alongside the video. Doing this really emphasised the video whilst making it more 3D and interactive, which made the points they were making stand out.
After this was Katie, who walked on stage accompanied with an Irish song “Galway Bay”, and explains that this music has a sentimental value to her Granddad. As Katie warms up the audience, she says that it is her third year in a row that she had performed at the event, which naturally made me excited to see what new poems she would perform this year. Her poems scratched beneath the surface to reveal that she was coping with pain and being grateful for her family. Katie was confident on stage, and this only aided her delivery of the poems. At one point I even had goose bumps, she was that good.
Next was Redbridge Dance Club with their dance piece about social media and the internet. Throughout the performance people were using their mobiles to portray another side of themselves. However, the dancing was reactive of this, showing how they actually felt under this façade. When looking around, the audience were fascinated, and were really enjoying the performance. The dancing itself was brilliant, with two very impressive solos.
Sam from RAWD then introduced us to our next act Bank View MADD. His slow walk onto the stage had got funnier every time, but by now it made me not stop laughing. By the end of every one of his introductions to the next acts about to perform, he had me genuinely excited to watch them. Bank View MADD performed a contemporary dance piece that was catchy, in sync and downright impressive. They danced alongside “See Beneath Your Beautiful”, which fit in with the theme nicely. This dancing was accompanied by two solo singers, which only made the performance even better.
Acting Up were next, who began sitting on a row of chairs across the stage. This only made me more curious as to what would happen next. The group began by holding up several cards, which explored the theme of “Scratch”, responding with “Why not?”, “Who says we can’t?” and more. This was different, intriguing and thought provoking. After this a video telling the story of two people was played people acting besides it, which enriched the piece even more. Overall their performance told a story in an interesting way.
Next up was Wolfprint with their piece Irritation, which was both interesting and entertaining to watch. Personally, I loved the group’s idea, and thought it worked really well with the theme of the event whilst still being different and unique. The dancing was dramatic and bold, which worked well in grabbing the audience’s attention. It was lovely to watch the young people enjoying themselves as much as the audience were enjoying watching their performance.
The Young DaDaFest and YEP group followed this with their drama piece on the lives of different people from Liverpool, whilst there was a central character reliving the stories from previous years in his life. The use of several narratives left us wondering who’s going to come on next and what’s going to happen. I found the performance incredibly interesting and entertaining gaining an insight into these characters lives, and how this created an overall story itself. Everyone involved was extremely talented, and you could see how much they had put into the performance to make it as great as it was. The group was a perfect end to an evening of talent!”
-Rebecca Andrews, Digital Marketing Apprentice at DaDaFest