Photo credits: Temasek Polytechnic Digital Media and Production Crew
Every year, our dancers look forward to our Freshmen Showcase where our Year 2 dancers choreograph short dance pieces for our newly recruited dancers. It is a platform for our juniors to showcase their creative capabilities and for our freshmen to make their debut as a member of TPDE!
OOMPH!
In 2019, we held the 6th Edition of OOMPH! It was a showcase-competition format which was open to all members of the public to watch.
The freshmen were grouped randomly with other year 1s in their respective genres. They trained in these groups for a period of 3 months before showcasing the item choreographed by the year 2s. Alumni guests were also involved to judge the items showcased. This creates a friendly competitive atmosphere between the freshmen teams and choreographers.
That's not all. Our year 3 seniors also put up a special dance item showcasing TPDE's core genres (Hip Hop, Modern and B-Boy) and non-core genres (Locking, Street Jazz, Choreography, House, Popping). It is where our seniors are given a chance to share the stage as a batch and inspire the new batch of dancers.
Watch the recorded videos of OOMPH! Vol. 6 here : )
PYJAMA NIGHT
In more recent years, we were unable to hold OOMPH due to the pandemic. However, we still wanted to give our freshmen an opportunity to make their debut. This is how Pyjama Night (PJN) came about!
PJN is an internal, online event created by the Main Committee of 20/21 to continue our Freshmen Showcase virtually. In the 1st edition of PJN, 100% of training AND filming was done online in the comfort of our own homes. Despite this, it was a success and the event received good feedback form our freshmen. For PJN Vol. 2, the teams were allowed to film in person in our school campus. There were a total of 9 videos produced from this event.
While PJN allowed our dancers to explore the possibilities of doing a filmed item and exposed our dancers to pre and post production of filming, we hope that we will be able to bring back physical performances like OOMPH back to the stage.
Auditions for the batch of AY22/23 are now closed, follow @tpdeofficial for updates on future recruitment initiatives!