The Upper School hosted its annual talent show, HOSCARS, which featured various acts ranging from dances to magic tricks, in the gym today.

Sign-ups for the show started Feb. 1, while auditions began on Feb. 23. ASB received 32 sign-ups for auditions, and a committee of 13 student council members ranked the 23 acts that sent in audition videos or applied for in-person auditions, eventually deciding on the 15 acts that appeared at the show today.

In contrast to previous years, in which HOSCARS was themed around a subject, such as Star Wars in 2014, this year’s show did not have a theme, and ASB attempted to include more diverse acts over vocal ones.

“We decided not to have a theme because Mr. Williamson didn’t want the theme to detract from the overall message of HOSCARS, because HOSCARS in itself is already sort of a theme, that we’re trying to emulate the Oscars,” Grace Guan (12), ASB secretary, said. “In the past we’ve had a lot of vocal acts, and people really wanted to get away from that. In fact, a good majority of the acts that we ended up rejecting were vocal acts, although this wasn’t because the acts were bad; it was just that we didn’t have room.”

The show’s masters of ceremonies, seniors Ronak Baldua, Logan Drazovich, Ankur Karwal, Dhanush Madabusi, Sanil Rajput and Edward Sheu, bantered and joked among themselves between acts, performing humorous skits such as freestyle rap battles and parodies of the Republican presidential debates and the weekly Eagle updates at school meetings.

The MCs also announced the awards at the end of the show. One boy and one girl from each grade, chosen by the class deans, rated acts on the four elements of originality, cleanliness, execution, and overall appeal. Tiffany Wong (9) was awarded best solo act for her performance of Marcel Tournier’s “Féerie: Prélude et Danse” on harp, while the boys varsity basketball team was awarded best group act for its annual rendition of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

A dance routine set to mashed-up Korean pop songs performed by sophomores, juniors and seniors was judged most creative act, and a magic routine by seniors Nikita Kosolobov and Jonathan “Johnny” Trinh was named best overall.

Zachary Wong (9) was judged best instrumental act for his electric violin cover of Meghan Trainor’s “Like I’m Gonna Lose You,” mathematics teacher Gabriele Stahl was named best dance act for her tango routine and Arun Shriram (12) was awarded best vocal act for his beatboxing.

Zachary, who has been playing violin for 10 years, recorded and replayed segments of the song as he played them in the show, resulting in multiple melodies playing at once.

“I watched this guy on YouTube, Bryson Andres, and he inspired me to have this idea. I just thought it would be cool to try this idea out, so HOSCARS was just a goal for me to achieve,” Zachary said. “It feels great, and I just want to thank everyone who voted for me, but I just thought that the whole experience for me was great.”

Stahl, who dances tango as a hobby, tries to perform at HOSCARS every four years.

“I’ve been dancing tango for 15 years now, and I go to a milonga [social tango] event every week,” Stahl said. “My room is full of tango, and so students always ask me, ‘Oh, can you show us? Can you show us?’ And I can’t teach tango in 10 minutes and then show them, so I always feel they should see it at least once in their four years that they are at Harker. That’s why I try to do it every four years, and that’s why I decided to do it this year.”

Andrew Rule (11), who performed popular songs using jazz instruments along with juniors Maile Chung, Davis Dunaway and Jack Farnham at HOSCARS, discussed his group’s history with the show.

“We’ve been in this jazz combo for a long time, and we decided to start playing more rock-style popular music more recently. We kind of want to step it up this year; we want to go away from the jazz stuff that we’ve been doing and towards songs that people actually recognize,” Andrew said. “The great thing about jazz is that it changes a little bit every time we play it, so while this isn’t quite jazz, we don’t have any music; we arranged the entire thing ourselves, just talking about it with each other.”

Freshman Kelsey Wu, who performed Adele’s “All I Ask” at the show on piano, decided to audition for the show to see how she felt about performing.

“I just wanted to try [HOSCARS] out, because I’m still a freshman,” she said. “I’ve always really liked singing and playing piano, and I do it a lot in my spare time. I’ve been playing piano for a while, and I’ve been in choir throughout middle school and I’m now in Bel Canto, so I’ve been singing for a while too.”

The HOSCARS show remains an important school event.

“I think it’s just really fun for entertainment reasons. It’s cool to see what people can do, and with the exception of a few acts, most are entertaining,” audience member Michael Tseitlin said. “I’d say it’s hard to choose [a favorite], but there were a couple that I really liked. The beatboxing was really nice, and I really liked the magic one too.”

ASB plans for HOSCARS to continue as a student council tradition next year.

Gallery • 16 Photos

Rose Guan

Juniors Davis Dunaway, Jack Farnham and Andrew Rule play guitar, trumpet and trombone during their jazz performance, the opening number at HOSCARS. Davis, Jack, Andrew and Maile Chung (11) have performed together at HOSCARS since their freshman year.