DAY 11: Quilt, Creek, and Creatures
Today for breakfast campers enjoyed bagels with cream cheese and oatmeal. Warmup was lead by voice teacher Dana which mostly consisted of stretches to prepare for the rehearsals to come. During Will’s musicianship class, our singers continued a dictation of ‘Happy Birthday.’
Walker Creek staff served up nachos with salad for lunch before our announcements and spirit judging. Today’s spirit day theme was ‘creature feature’ where campers were encouraged to dress up as any creature, real or imaginary. We saw creative presentations such as Kerala’s flower monster and Leeza’s tie-dye unicorn. Winners today were cabin eagle and cabin badger in third, cabin salmon in second, and cabin hawk took first place as the muppets.
After a rejuvenating non-mandatory rest period, campers split off to do arts and crafts, go to the pond or the creek, and voice lessons. Our special activity today was a dance party where Isabella danced to ‘thriller’ and everyone danced to Chappell Roan. Arts and crafts had the usual lanyard and friendship-bracelet making along with making a camp quilt. Sage made an amazing rainbow fish square, and Tate and Nora F drew a choir landscape. The pond again involved a lot of boating, swimming and henna tattoo art. Today also included a fun trip to the creek where counselors told silly stories about the history of choir camp.
Camp Joyful Voices also did a creek walk this afternoon, and campers had lots of fun wading through the water and exploring the rocks.
Today’s recital was an all-camper feature. It began with voice teacher Dana’s concert choir voice class performing ‘Prayer Duet’ from the opera of Hansel and Gretel. Ensemble singers Sophi O., Sarah Khan-Akselrod, Murielle, Matilda, and Josie enchanted the audience with Italian art songs. Nora P sang ‘Greensleeves’ and Daniel did ‘The Quest for the Impossible Dream.’ After all of these lovely performances everyone was hungry for dinner which consisted of hotdogs, tater tots (renamed tater-dots due to their unusual shape) and salad. Dessert was once again chocolate pudding and whipped cream.
Tonight’s activity was Night in Nature. Ensemble ventured out to the water tower where they formed a ‘tuning circle’ and shared their goals for the upcoming choir year. Concert Choir silently walked a bit up the road to an open clearing, listening to nature. They “YAWP” ed (from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”) and mentors taught the mentees “Campfire Song.”
Meanwhile, Camp Joyful Voices played a game of Counselor Bingo! They collected hidden butterfly tokens around their rehearsal room, then went from counselor to counselor to exchange tokens for answers and find out whose staff member’s fun fact was whose.
Campers are currently sound asleep and we are all looking forward to one final full day of choir camp tomorrow!