Showing off Talent on the Small Screen: Sandburg's Got Talent

By: Bella Tortorici

Editor

February 24, 2021

The show must go on! In order to safely showcase all our talented Eagles, the Sandburg Student Council produced a virtual livestream to replace the typical in-person talent show. On Friday February 12th, Sandburg’s Got Talent premiered on YouTube at 7pm. Many amazing acts were featured from singers to dancers to spoken word poetry. And unlike any other year, 6 celebrity guests were featured, and Mr. Woolley returned to host as emcee! Though still available to watch on Sandburg’s YouTube channel, a summary of the show will be provided along with an interview with this year’s winner, senior Charlotte Reynolds.

The night started off on the PAC stage with Dr. Tyrell and Mr. Whooley as our hosts, masked up of course. Besides being a video, another differentiation of the 2021 Sandburg’s Got Talent from previous years was that 6 celebrities introduced two acts each. David Delouise, Mr. Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place, announced the first two acts: Grace Kane singing with Saffion Chung on piano and Renna Abozir playing a piano solo. These beautiful musicians kicked off the talent show just right! Then, Amel Pineda from Journey introduced Ezeldean Shalabi singing solo with Chris Burgess on guitar. The Live Chat feature on the video exploded with lots of positive comments for them; it was awesome to see such a supportive Eagle community! Afterwards, Ashley Argota, also known as Lulu from True Jackson, VP, presented the next two performances which were a dance duet by Megan Murphy and Savannah Frazier and a singing solo by Julia Butkus featuring her own personal editing touch. Both of these acts did great! More of our musically inclined Eagles amazed the audience with Jess Warpehowski playing the piano and singing and a song by Mina Nguyen announced by 13 Reason Why’s Michele Selene Ang. Next, Mia Talerico, the actress of Charlie from Good Luck Charlie, introduced Summer Bakart’s spoken word poetry about loss and a dance solo by Kaela Calderon, who ended up winning third place. And last but not least, our second and first place winners were announced by Blake Micheal from Lemonade Mouth and Dog with a Blog. Congratulations to Jocelyn Graczak and Saffion Chung for their second place song and piano piece and Charlotte Reynolds’ first place dance to an ABBA medley!

Reynold’s road to success was not easy, however. Unfortunately, her senior year was not how she imagined it to be. Being involved in iFest, Eaglettes, and Orchesis, Reynolds loves to dance. She also takes dance classes outside of school, but had to switch studios due to the pandemic. Feeling heartbroken, she noted in an interview, “So I am sitting here, with the worst senior year ever and all I want to do is dance. Then I go on Instagram, and I see an ad for the Sandburg Talent show and I was immediately interested, and I finally got my solo!” Unlike other dancing acts that are featured in the talent show, Reynolds wanted to create a fun and upbeat choreography, which only took her about an hour. Her solo was “Very different from how I normally dance which would be more fluid and emotional, [and] this Mama Mia remix was just all fun and full of my favorite skills!” Her win was met with an outpouring of love and support from her family, friends, and the Live Chat on the video.

Despite being different from previous years, the 2021 Sandburg’s Got Talent was still able to accomplish what it has for the past decade: highlight our talented Eagles!