SAN­DRA L BLOOD

mindup.slblood@gmail.com

Every com­peti­tor of the Can­dice Clarke Acad­e­my of Dance (CCAD) that par­tic­i­pat­ed at the 25th World Cham­pi­onships of Per­form­ing Arts (WCO­PA 2022) from Ju­ly 23 to 30 held at Dis­ney­land, Ana­heim, CA, USA earned a medal, re­port­ed CEO and lead artis­tic di­rec­tor, Can­dice Clarke. “It’s the first year this has hap­pened for this com­pe­ti­tion.”

Over­all: 79 medals were bagged, with 20 award­ed to co-artis­tic Di­rec­tor Chelsea An­dell. Cham­pi­ons were: Alyssa Joseph: Grand Ju­nior Cham­pi­onship Award and Di­vi­sion Win­ner for Vo­cal Opera so­lo as com­peti­tor No. 1028; and CCAD: Grand Cham­pi­on Ju­nior Dance Award, and the Cre­o­la group: Di­vi­sion Win­ner for Dance Open. Al­so, two schol­ar­ships were award­ed with an en­roll­ment dead­line of De­cem­ber 2023 as cit­ed in the let­ters dat­ed Ju­ly 2022, signed by se­nior ex­ec­u­tive en­roll­ment spe­cial­ist, Roger Del Po­zo.

Ju­nior re­cip­i­ent Mayah Mur­rell gets 25 per cent off tu­ition for the Tal­ent Based Schol­ar­ship to­wards any short-term pro­gram at the New York Film Acad­e­my (NY­FA), in­clud­ing NY­FA Sum­mer Camp pro­grams, and se­nior, Kielan Ja­cobs, may pur­sue the Con­ser­va­to­ry and De­gree Pro­grams in act­ing for film or mu­si­cal the­atre.

The WCO­PA tags the event as a one of a kind, an­nu­al world’s best tal­ent in­ter­na­tion­al per­form­ing arts cham­pi­onship, and the Grand Open­ing—colour­ful Pa­rade of Na­tions—as the pop­u­lar high­light of the fes­tiv­i­ties.

Grand Junior Championship Awardee and Division Winner for Vocal Opera solo of the 25th WCOPA, Alyssa Joseph, performs onstage.

“WCO­PA rep­re­sents 70 li­censed coun­tries, and the event is the on­ly of­fi­cial in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion pro­gramme for sea­soned and up and com­ing per­form­ers and en­ter­tain­ers held an­nu­al­ly, and judged by Hol­ly­wood in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als, and coun­tries are rep­re­sent­ed by del­e­ga­tions sim­i­lar to Olympics. For this com­pe­ti­tion, se­lec­tion of of­fi­cial con­tes­tants was held in the US, Cana­da, Caribbean, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, Asia and South Africa.”

Fifty coun­tries par­tic­i­pat­ed, and CCAD com­pet­ed in dance, vo­cal, act­ing, mod­el­ing and in­stru­ments.

The team that copped the Di­vi­sion Win­ner for Dance Open ti­tle with their Cre­o­la per­for­mance, The Phoenix: An­tho­nia Ab­bott, Toosha­la and De­viyani Mo­hammed, Mayah Mur­rell and Joan­na Fi­garo (skirts), Talise Par­ris (bal­le­ri­na) and Chelsea An­dell (stilts). Cos­tumes were de­signed by Jean Clarke-Mills.

The win­ning Cre­o­la sto­ry t was about a princess bal­le­ri­na named Talise, who fell in­to a deep sleep, and when she awoke, she was star­tled by a gi­ant-sized dancer (played by Chelsea on stilts). She then got up and ob­served life­less coloured ob­jects on the floor, and when she touched on them, they all came to life in a kalei­do­scop­ic ar­ray of skirt­ed fig­ures; she was then in Cre­o­la Land, as they – belé, In­di­an, African, mod­ern, tap dancers – danced away see­ing the bal­le­ri­na even­tu­al­ly con­sumed by the skirts when they cir­cled her.

Can­dice Clarke con­grat­u­lat­ed all her per­form­ers, she said she’s al­ready shoot­ing for 2023’s com­pe­ti­tion with a plan to make some sweep­ing ad­just­ments to en­sure the se­nior cham­pi­onship ti­tle is al­so bagged.

Some CCAD/T&T medal winners on stage at the WCOPA 2022: Talise Parris, Mayah Murrel, Anthonia Abbott, Toolshala and Deviyani Mohammed, Alyssa Joseph, right with her championship trophies, and Chelsea Andell, front.