*** Katya really doesn't want me to write a blog post about this BUT this is part of our family history, so I can't skip it:) I'll TRY to be short though.
I was looking for opportunities for Katya to participate in some sort of singing competition in the UK and stumbled upon Open MicUK. As Katya is too young for X Factor and they don't have Voice Kids here, this was the best thing I could find. They were having auditions all through the summer and early fall, so we signed up for one on September 12th at Milton Keynes, 45 min away from us.
This was a closed audition in front of the judges with different age categories, such as under 13s, under 16s, etc. Katya chose to sing "Popular" from "Wicked" as she felt most confident in that song. The kids had to go into the judges' room in groups and sing one at a time, but we couldn't see any of that. Katya did great, as she stated. And so did the judges. She was picked to go up to the next level which was a live show in Milton Keynes with audience and everything (but not TV). A couple of judges even came up to us after her audition and chatted about how well she did and how expressive she was.
The next show was on Oct. 17th.
Before then, I got a phone call from the Big Help Management company's owner Dutch Van Spall, who talked to me for a bit about Katya and her talents and what we could do to give her more opportunities to develop them. She's never had singing lessons after all (and we know she'd love them). She was invited to participate in their four-part Academy that happens on certain Saturdays to learn more about singing, vocal performance, recording, etc. It's not free, but we knew Katya would love to do something like that. So we agreed. She'd start at the end of November and will have those academy sessions in Rugby (near Coventry, about an hour away) each month, for five hours. So that's that.
And then our next performance came. We were supposed to sell some tickets for the performance as this was supposed to build your fan base and of course make money for the company. We managed to sell seven tickets plus four for our family, and we were given twenty five. Katya chose to sing Rachel Platten's "Fight Song".
Out of 22 performers under 16s, Katya performed as number 6. We all thought she performed incredibly well! Seriously! This girl can sing and own the stage! It was perfect.
BUT
At the end when the votes came in from the audience and the judges Katya was not picked to go to the next round. I think they picked seven others. Most of them were as good as Katya but a couple were not, in our opinion, so it was a real shock to all of us that she didn't get through.
Needless to say, it was a sad-sad moment for her, but she didn't show it for a while. She was grateful to people who came to support her and only let her true feelings show to me when we were alone. There was no sense to speculate why it happened, but we couldn't really understand why. The judges' feedback (that came a week or so later) stated that she has a lovely voice, moved around the stage well but would benefit from voice lessons. Possibly, her version of the song was too much like the original and they wanted to see her to make it her own. That's the only thing that I can think of that they maybe didn't like, because seriously, she was great!
All kids who didn't get through were also given a chance to earn a spot in the next level if they got enough text votes for them in the next ten days...but each text cost 1 GBP and you could text up to 10 times. That first day we did that and texted but after a while...seriously...it all just seemed like a big money making scheme more than a real singing competition. So we gave up and didn't text. A preliminary scoreboard showed Katya being in second place actually in those text votes, but we didn't want to keep spending pounds. And Katya didn't want us to do that either.
We weren't allowed to take pictures or video record anything, so we don't have any record of what really happened:) No matter what, it was a wonderful experience and I know Katya would do something like that again. So proud of her for being one brave girl to do such things and show her talent!
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