The RBHS show choirs have reached great heights during their competitions this year. The mixed choir, City Lights, won Grand Champion in the show choir festival held in Carthage, Illinois, while the all-girls choir Satin N’ Lace won Grand Champion at Show Choir Nationals in Nashville, Tennessee. Now, with the successes of the past year behind them, show choir students are moving on to their next big event of the year: auditions.

At the end of each May, returning and incoming show choir members alike congregate in the choir room for a chance to be placed in either City Lights or Satin N’ Lace. The audition consists of each individual performing a vocal solo that is around a minute long and performing a pre-learned dance routine in groups of three people.

Show choir director Mike Pierson looks for specific qualities when judging auditioning students.

“The ideal student for show choir auditions is well-prepared, they have picked a song that suits their voice well [and] that works well for an audition for show choir,” Pierson said, “and that student is able to stand up and not only sing the song but portray the song’s character with their face and perhaps with their body.”

For most show choir participants, this is the most stressful time as their audition determines which choir they will be in during the coming year.

“The most stressful part of the audition for me is the vocal solo as it is 80% of your overall audition score,” junior Karina Kitchen said. “Since the dance section of your audition score is a lot less than that, I don’t get as stressed out about that as I do with the vocal solo.”

Students learned the dance routine Monday evening at 6:30 following a parent meeting discussing what to expect as a show choir parent. The dance routine to the Neon Trees song “Everybody Talks” was choreographed and taught by recently graduated seniors Morgan Widhalm and Emily Thomas.

While some were concerned about remembering the dance choreography, other students like junior Hahn Ngo weren’t as worried about remembering the dance as they were about perfecting their vocal solo.

“I’m least worried about the dance because my song is the highest percentage of my [audition] score and the dance isn’t super hard or anything,” Ngo said. “It’s just simple and fun.”

Despite the stress and worry that comes with the audition, Kitchen tries to remember to remain calm and to have fun because performing is what she enjoys doing the most.

“At the end of the day, you did all that you could and it’s important to remember that, no matter what happens, it isn’t the end of the world if you don’t make the choir that you want,” Kitchen said. “As long as you had fun while performing, that’s all that matters.”