Archive for the ‘Wendy Huang’ tag
Smojoe Judges Miss Teen Canada World Preliminaries July 23rd Toronto
On Thursday July 23rd 2009, Rob Campbell, the social media director for The 2009 Search for Miss Teen Canada - World was invited to judge The Preliminaries at the Betty Oliphant Theatre. At 9pm, fifty four girls got off a charter bus outside with dresses, fancy shoes and all their costumes.
Betty Oliphant Theatre is cute little venue on Jarvis Street. It’s one of only a half dozen non union theaters left in Toronto, and has a friendly and accommodating staff that still love their craft and are keen to show visitors and trespassers like myself exactly what’s possible in a modern venue. Smojoe was treated to a preview of the lights and sounds of the upcoming pageant preliminaries, an hour before they actually happened. And I should NOTE the show went seamlessly. Great work guys.
Anyone familiar with the Miss Teen Canada- World beauty pageant knows the pageant director Michelle Weswaldi is the benevolent ‘boss of all aesthetic things’. She bought or licensed the World title a few years ago, and has been growing the pageant ever since. Unknown to me before I accepted this contract, a national beauty pageant is a year long activity, with regional pageants all across the country in every province; the MTC-W pageant culminates in a week long event in Toronto Ontario at the end of July.
This year, the final moments of The Search For Miss Teen Canada World will occur on July 25th in the John Bassett Theatre in the Metro Toronto Convention center at 8pm, and I’ll be sure and post a detailed account of that evening in upcoming dispatches.
Michelle Weswaldi runs a tight ship, like someone that’s organized a fashion event once a month for three and a half years. Earlier in the week I had the pleasure of watching her interact with some of the young contestants. She has the ability to focus on each one individually all at once. She listens just long enough to determine what’s important, and then interrupts with the answer before the girl is finished describing any of the symptoms of her problem. You get the feeling Michelle has heard it all before, and doesn’t play favourites.
What should the judges actually be judging in a teen beauty pageant? I know the answer to this now. Beyond physicality (tall thin pretty etc) and whatever strikes them as beautiful, judges look for style.
Michelle Weswaldi, seen wearing an orange dress and shuffling pens in the photo above, was carefully to elaborate on exactly what Judges should look for when ranking performances, and she tried to describe the special confidence she seeks. Its personality, and stage presence.
Thinking back on it all now, there was one contestant (I don’t rememebr which one) that walked a little slower than the beat, but still in time if that makes sense, and she gave the entire catwalk a special charm. And there were girls who were obviously very nervous and gave it nothing. During this experience Smojoe gained insights and a new understanding into the origins of personal style.
The show started at 9:15pm and was done by 10. The first girl to emerge from the curtain was Wendy Huang and she rocked it. A petite girl, her performance set the bar pretty high, for me anyway. She has a bounce and a nice bright smile, and she walked to the very extremes of the stage and waited the precious moments that the audience needs to absorb the full ensemble. I gave her an eight and I was still watching when she disappeared, with a final wave, backstage. Wendy had style, and it showed in her walk and her charisma as she presented herself on stage.
And there was applause. Every girl had their fair share of applause, but some of the contestants had personal cheering sections! This was quite effective. Unlike other sporting events, beauty queen contestants are affected by audience reactions, and having five or eight friends sitting in the audience loudly cheering your performance really helps. It clearly made each of these contestants more confident and sub consciously it plays on the judges too - it lets them know that these girls are somebody’s favourites.
This is Brittani Gray, one of the youngest contestants in this year’s pageant. Her blog is good and full of pictures of herself and she writes with the skill and ability of someone much older. Her performance in the preliminaries was strong, especially her evening dress, which was spectacular. I include this photo here because its the only one of any swimsuit model that wasn’t blurred or red eyed or badly under exposed, but of course its all of those things.
The Judges marked the papers with numbers that represent ‘beauty’, an intangible something that each contestant strives to possess, both inside and outside their bodies.
