sports or colours. (Therefore I have danced with brooms, hockey sticks and glow in the dark
sticks and some really weird clothing.) Wensink is the dance school from Gerrit en Gerrie
Wensink. Their son Lars teaches there as well and there are several other teachers, Denise,
Alma, Leonie etc. B-anything -kids, juniors and adults- are the teams that dance competitions
and they have won many national and international championships. These teams also
perform in the show. Every group trains one season for the show and there are 5 rehearsals
one of which in Orpheus itself. Approximately 300 students participate every year.
In the weeks leading up to the show everybody has to
fit clothes, try make up and dot the last i’s. A lot of
people help with organizing the show. People, who
make clothing, do hair and make-up, lights and people
who help on stage and most of them do it voluntarily.
On the day of the show it is usually a bit of a chaos.
Everybody needs to get changed and go through hair
and make- up. Behind the scenes every dancer stays in
a large hall for hours. Right before entering the stage
the dancers have to be completely quiet. This was
quite hard the first time and second and… It is really
exciting to perform for 700 people, even though it is
mostly family and friends of all the dancers. Making
the show is a boost for the group spirit and I have made a lot of new friends during the shows.
Quality wise it is nothing compared to professional dance
groups since it is mostly for fun. The B-anything teams are
really good and so the professional Latin/ballroom dancers
we’ve got. The themes make the show quite funny. It usually
tells a story and there is some acting. For example we have
done a show about a fairy-tale with a princess and one with
a grandfather going on a trip around the world. In the
rehearsals the staff spends a lot of time on the lights and
background of the performance giving the show the right
atmosphere. Personally I really like the kids because they
are really cute. And the thing I hate the most is the make-up because it is really thick and
mostly orange, red, dark blue and more of these kinds of colours. This year the theme is best
of and I’ve been training for the past couple of weeks. The show is the 5th of July so I can’t tell
if it is good but I certainly hope so. Next year will be my last year because I’m going to study
afterwards but I hope Wensink continues for many years, making a lot of dancers smile.
Melanie de Haan E5A