Amelia Chandulal-Mackay choreographer for Amdram's Phantom of the Opera
The dream has definitely begun and the road leading up to Amdram's production of the Phantom of the Opera 2021 was kicked off in style.
Two dance and movement workshops were hosted by Amelia Chandulal-Mackay, giving the opportunity for those interested in auditioning for the production a taste The Masquerade.
The workshops attracted a diverse range of people, from experienced dancers to complete novices, and everyone had a blast. Amelia had a calm and patient manner with everyone, and managed to get everyone dancing in (almost!) unison.
Some of the steps were tricky, but Amelia explained it really well, and broke everything down into manageable chunks. When put together with the music to Masquerade it was amazing to see people performing a routine they had only been working on for an hour.
It was a wonderful experience, with a friendly atmosphere, and gave us all a glimpse of what our show might look like when we perform in September next year.
Following the workshops, we asked Amelia to be our lead choreographer. Amelia comes to us with a huge amount of dance experience, and has an extensive and impressive history working with different dance companies. She is currently teaching dance at SABA while she studies at the University of Auckland. We are extremely pleased that she has accepted the challenge.
It was such a coup to have Amelia lead these workshops and for those who don't know her Amelia was born and raised in Whanganui.
She trained with her mother at the Whanganui Ballet and Dance Academy, and was a junior associate of the New Zealand School of Dance for three years, and part of the RNZB mentor programme. She began fulltime training in Sydney in 2014, and then spent a further year as a trainee at Orlando Ballet, where she had some wonderful performance and outreach opportunities.
She later worked with Milwaukee Ballet II and Oklahoma City Ballet, and also spent a year at the Ailey School in New York City on Scholarship.
Amelia had returned for her father's birthday the day level 3 lockdown was announced in Auckland, and is unable to return to her university until it is over.
Although it is hard to be away from normal life, she empathises for those who remain in Auckland, she feels lucky to have missed out on another lockdown, and to be able to spend some extra time in Whanganui catching up with friends and family.
Next year, she will have some scope to complete her course work remotely, so that she, along with a team of locally based choreographers, can focus on the Phantom of the Opera.
So save the date: Coming up next in our series is a vocal workshop on August 29 with our musical director Lynn Whiteside.
Lynn is an experienced and talented vocal coach, and the workshop will include warm ups, looking after your voice and learning a song from Phantom of the Opera in four parts. It will be held at Amdram at 2pm. If you want to come along we do need you to register and absolutely no experience required.
"We are running these workshops to help people gain confidence, and give them their best shot when it comes to audition time," says Graham Dack, the director of the show.
We would like to thank Amelia for the time and effort she put in to the workshops, and now that we have her on board the team, we hope to be able to run more before the auditions.
Jessica Charlton
Whanganui Midweek 26/8/20