In front of an audience of 270 people, 36 choir students each performed a solo or duet over the nights of Nov. 1 and Nov. 2.

The annual cabaret performance consists of two evenings of dining and entertainment at Willow Meadows Baptist Church. Each ticket to the show cost $30.

“It’s a mini fundraiser for the choir,” sophomore Kamea Ta said. “The money that comes from cabaret helps fund the trips that we need to go to. For this year, we’re going to New York.”

This year marks the 19th anniversary of the show, as it was started after Choir Director Amy Solberg Odiase’s first year teaching at Bellaire.

“When I started at Bellaire my first year, I just noticed there weren’t a lot of opportunities for students to do solos outside of choir, so I created them at the cabaret dinner my second year to give the students a chance to perform,” Solberg said.

The idea of a dinner theater originated back to when Solberg was in high school. However, she altered the concept to suit her students.

“I was in a group that did a magical dinner where we learned music from the Renaissance period, served food and did a play that went with it,” Solberg said. “I decided I wanted to take that same idea, but make it more flexible. [The cabaret would] include a meal, but also solos [where] students got to pick [what they wanted to sing].”

Ta chose to sing “A Whole New World” with sophomore Wesley George. Preparation for the solos and duets is mostly out of class, as the choir only practiced the group numbers class. This presented a challenge for Ta and George.

“We don’t get a lot of opportunities to practice together, so I think we’ve [practiced] together about three times total before the show,” Ta said. “We were both a little bit nervous, but I think we carried the song out really nicely.”

For Ta, the cabaret is more than showcasing talent — it is about supporting others.

“[When you are] waiting in the back before you go [on stage], there’s always going to be people who cheer you on, and [you] could cheer others on too,” Ta said. “I thought that was really touching.”