Hanah Jon Taylor, a renowned saxophonist and flutist in Madison who has performed worldwide, will be the very special guest as Lake View Elementary School and Madison School and Community Recreation (MSCR) host the first annual Black Excellence Pageant tonight, aiming to showcase student learning, diversity, and Black excellence.
The Black Excellence Pageant at Lake View Community School, located on Madison’s North Side, takes place from 5:30-8:30 p.m. and will feature student performances, artwork, and presentations with the goals of honoring Black history and culture while centering joy.
Arree Macon, Lake View MSCR director, came up with the Black Excellence Pageant idea as he remembered participating in a Black history pageant as a child in Buffalo, N.Y.
“I’m excited about the first annual Black Excellence Pageant and about this partnership between Lakeview Community School and MSCR. It will be great to see that our students have the opportunity to celebrate their knowledge of Black history and what they learned in school about Black history,” Macon tells Madison365.
Students will be hanging Black joy posters in the hallway for the event that will feature the Black National Anthem, a fashion show, a Black History Month video, the cha-cha slide, a performance by the Madison La Follette Step Team, and more.
“We’ll also have art on display from our artists at Northport Apartments, which we’re excited about … some real professional artwork. It’s going to be a packed event. It will be super joyful,” Rachel Deterding, Lake View Community School Resource Coordinator, tells Madison365.
“The pageant is really Arree’s brainchild. I’m here to help out with some of the logistics of things but truly this is his vision that’s coming to life,” she adds. “This is our first ever Black Excellence Pageant that we’re putting on and we’re hoping to make this an annual event at Lake View.”
One of the highlights of the event will be a performance by Hanah Jon Taylor, who has been a prominent figure in Madison’s jazz scene for almost three decades. Taylor has been visiting the classes at Lake View Community School this week to teach the students about music.
(Photos supplied.)
“Most of our classes have had that opportunity to interact with Hanah Jon Taylor and do some on-the-spot improv with him which has been amazing. So we are looking forward to him performing,” Deterding says. “We think it’s going to be a really nice combination of students showcasing their learning and having that performance opportunity to show what they know. Being able to bring in a local talent like Hanah Jon Taylor is awesome. He’s a big name in the community here in Madison and so we’re really happy that we’re able to connect with him.”
The whole Black Excellence Pageant came together through a grant from Friends of MSCR, a non-profit supporting MSCR programs and services.
“Arree and I collaborated on a proposal, I wrote something up, and we ended up able to get funding for this,” Deterding says. “The whole goal of the event is to showcase student learning and to center joy and Black excellence in what we’re doing. A lot of times what our kids learn in school is really Black history with a deficit lens and while that element of history is important for us to understand because it is a part of our history, there’s also a great deal of joy. And there are many examples of Black excellence living in our world today that we want to make sure we highlight.”
Macon says that MSCR and Lake View Community School, located at 1802 Tennyson Lane, have been strong partners since Lake View first started.
“Between providing accessible programming for students, creating field trips where students get to explore the many, many talents that they have, I see many more partnerships like this going on,” he says.
“It’’s really nice that we have a combination of students engaging in the Black Excellence Pageant and showing off things that they’ve learned during the school day,” Deterding adds. “And then we also have after-school groups, and of course, all the MSCR staff who are available to help run the event. So I think it’s a really nice partnership between both the school and MSCR. It’s going to be a fun night showacasing that learning and talent.”
