The Fine Arts Academy had this year’s first showcase on October 24, 2017. Paula Rivera-Lugo, a sophomore, gave a performance.

“[The showcase] went really great. Everything went really good because everyone worked so hard and we had our evidences, we have evidence one, two, and three. And it’s like evidence one you have to have 15% done and then it’s just good because each evidence the people from your strand give you feedback and tell you what you’re doing wrong with your piece or how you can improve and that’s very helpful,” Lugo said .

This year’s showcase theme was barriers. All the strands in the Fine Arts Academy were given the opportunity to interpret it, in any way they liked.

“At the end of the day we still need each other and in relationships we still love each other even though we have issues. I collaborated with Carly Corso and we thought about what barriers meant to us and to other people. We thought, ‘Well barriers, there’s a lot of barriers in everyday relationships [not just in] romantic, but also friendships’,” said Lugo. “We decided to use the song ‘Issues’ by Julia Michaels to show how issues create barriers in relationships. We used a chair, and whenever I went up in the chair and whenever we moved the chair, that represented how, barriers [issues] go up and down.”

When it comes to showcase there’s a lot of preparation and thought that goes into it. According to Lugo it can sometimes be difficult.

“I think the hardest part was getting to interpret those issues while making it dance-y. We wanted to show how we could fight and do really sharp movements, but we didn’t want it to be all karate or something,” Lugo said. “With transitioning, we had a lot of pauses, because the song has a lot of pauses. We wanted to know how to transition from one movement to the other without just standing there. So it was really hard.”