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April 16, 2026As the year nears its end, the DanceVisions team is staying busy inviting the public to various shows.
Senior Ashlyn Beasley has danced for the team since her freshman year.
“I love dancing, and the DanceVisions is a great community and way to get involved at McGuinness,” Beasley said.
The spring recital “Essence” shaped up as major event, with Beasley expecting the show to be one of the dancers’ best as the team readied to put on 30 performances.
“The Essence show is our biggest show that DanceVisions has ever put on,” Beasley said.
Beasley said the team’s cohesion has been critical to its success.
“We're very close,” she said. “Everyone's very confident and willing to put in the work to make the performances be as good as they are.”
The team is also set to perform at the Calderon Dance Festival on May 16, then partner with local studios to host a joint “Range of Motion” showcase May 31.
Night of Champions
On April 30, the drama department will host a “Night of Champions” in order to raise money for the team’s trip to Nationals.
“Nationals can be really expensive, especially because it's out of state, so we essentially create a bunch of our own skits and have people who did really well at state and districts perform like their events,” department member Addison McCoy said.
McCoy said the group hasn’t picked a theme yet, but plan to create “transitional skits,” incorporating different team members’ performances.
Going to Nationals so far: seniors Eli Webb, Drake Mossauer, Jayden Southerland, Eve Moen, and Finn Janes; and sophomores Kendra Wadmia and Gabe Litchfield.
118 inducted into NHS
The Irish National Honor Society Chapter welcomed 118 sophomores and juniors.
To be inducted students were required to be in good standing, maintain a grade point average of at least 3.75 and have completed three semesters at the school.
Following the ceremony, inductees heard a talk from former mayor of Oklahoma City Andy Coats.
Genuis seeks to inspire students
For Berkley-educated pianist and composer Eric Genuis, music is about more than just entertainment. It is a language used to “uplift the soul.”
This is what Genius, also a graduate of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, aimed to communicate in playing for the student body, performing on his “Concerts for Hope” series at the school.
“The hope is to bring joy,” said Genuis, a devout Catholic speaker. “It's to elevate their humanity. It's to make them feel good. It's to recognize that humanity is good. When you inspire another person, what you're really saying is humanity is good. ‘Life is worthwhile.’”
In reflecting this goodness, Genuis seeks to highlight that each person is made in the image of God.
“The whole goal in life is to recognize the reality that there is a profound dignity of every person,” Genuis said.
Though he may not reach every person he plays for, Genuis said he won’t give up, continuing to play “with aggression.”
“With aggression, I sort of define it with vision, with determination, with conviction and with courage and with being willing to be wrong and to fall and to fail,” he said.
Genuis, who describes his music as “classical in form, but with a modern feel,” believes it can communicate his message in a unique way, reaching the soul unlike any other form of communication.
“It penetrates all those sorts of ideas that we have of how we should behave. That's the power of music.”
Photo: BMCHS pianist Eric Genuis performed with the string duet. Photo Molly Taylor.