Nella’s troupe on song

By ROD WISE

“I CAN sing, but I can’t dance. It was the one thing holding me back,” said Nella Magnante, whose Warrawong studio was basking in the warm afterglow of winning a swag of places in the recent Wollongong Eisteddfod.

Although she came from an Italian family background where music was everything, and she has been tramping the boards herself since she appeared in a Mt Warrigal Public School production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the age of six, she never went on with a career herself.

For example, she never auditioned with one of the big companies, like Opera Australia, despite having appeared as a soloist at the Sydney Opera House in the secondary schools festival in 1991 when she was a student at the Wollongong High School of the Performing Arts.

And she also had quite a repertoire, singing contem-porary songs from Kurt Weill and Ralph Vaughan Williams, appearing in Faure’s Requiem – “I loved it,” she said, referring to the haunting Pie Jesu, – “Carmina Burana and the Vivaldi Magnificat.”

But it was musical theatre that had always been her only love, and that was where her shortfall in dancing hurt.

“You can’t successfully audition for musical theatre if you can’t dance,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how well you can sing.”

Well, for someone who didn’t think she was fully equipped for musical theatre, she still managed to perform in shows put on by the Roo Theatre when it was based at Jamberoo, and the Guild Theatre.

Nevertheless, over the past 17 years, her second love, teaching, gradually began to grow, and then flourish with the establishment of VoiceworX 12 years ago.

Her approach to singing has always been to make a personal connection with the student first, she said, to get their confidence. “My job is to assess the student, find the difficulties and then fix them so they can produce their own unobstructed sound. None of my students are Mini Me’s. I don’t want them to mimic me, but to be themselves.”

As a result, VoiceworX has been extraordinarily success-ful, with more than 50 places gained by its students in the Wollongong Eisteddfod, with one of them, Adrienne Corradini, having scored 99 per cent from the judges for her rendition of Don’t cry for me, Argentina from Evita.

“Adrienne wowed the judges,” said Nella, now a mother of two of Berkeley, “and so she is appearing at the Eisteddfod showcase.

“The thrilling thing about teaching,” Nella said, “is that you can take someone very young, watch them grow and mature before passing them on to a higher centre of musical learning. I see VoiceworX as part of a process and I’m really happy with that.”

The Eisteddfod showcase will be held tomorrow night, Friday, July 25, at 7.00pm at IPAC, Burelli Street, Wollon-gong. Tickets at $15 are available from the box office.