East’s New Glee Club Holds Auditions

Sophomore Merit Christensen began watching “Glee” in eighth grade. After realizing that East didn’t have a show choir—a performance group that combines singing and dancing—Christensen made creating a club similar to “Glee” a goal of hers. Seeing videos of A Capella groups in choir this year also inspired her to start the club. Christensen and her good friend, sophomore Siarah Cunningham, took this idea to choir teacher Ken Foley, who agreed to sponsor the club.

“I am sponsoring the club,” Foley said. “But I’m hoping to leave most of it up to the girls in charge.”

Going into auditions, Christensen and Cunningham were hoping to have 15 to 20 people join the club.

“We were either scared that not enough people would try out or way too many people would try out and it would be like another choir,” Christensen said. “So that’s why we held auditions.”

Each student that auditioned was asked to bring in a piece of music to sing. It was not required, but most chose to sing A Capella, without any instrumental accompaniment.

All 14 people who tried out were accepted in the club.

“It was a casual tryout,” Cunningham said. “We just wanted to find out what their voices were like.”

The Glee club is planning to meet once a week on Wednesdays before school. The practices will be run by Christensen and Cunningham, but they are hoping to keep a very open and calm atmosphere where every member’s input is welcome. They are prepared to apply the knowledge they’ve gained from being in choir to their new club.

“We’ve learned a lot from choir and what our directors do so we will try to emulate that,” Christensen said.

During practices the members will sing and go over music. While some choreography will be incorporated in the numbers, the focus will remain on singing.

Being founders of the only Glee club in the district, Christensen and Cunningham are hoping to put on regular performances similar to Frequent Fridays, along with performances at special events.

Members of the club are excited that they have begun practices—the first one was on Friday Oct. 28.

“Being in the Glee club is a way for people who don’t get as much of a chance to express themselves do so,” club member and freshman Roxy Rutherford said.