By SARAH JANE VON WETTBERG
HOLLYWOOD, California — Two Pinay won top honors in the just concluded World Championships of Performing Arts (WCOPA) held here.
Lianah Santa Ana, an 11-year-old singing sensation from Freehold New Jersey, bagged the 2010 Grand Junior Champion Performer of the World, a competition for participants aged 11-15.
Team Philippines contestant Rose Marielle M. Corpuz, a native of Cabanatuan City in Nueva Ecija province, won the Senior Grand Champion Performer of the World award to make it a grand slam finish for the Filipinos.
WCOPA is an annual international talent competition in Hollywood participated in by the best aspiring performance from different countries of the world.
The events include dance, singing, modeling, acting, instrumentalists, and variety arts. In this Olympic-style competition, gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded to the winners. A grand champion is then chosen from among the winners in both the junior and senior categories.
Lianah said her dream is to perform in the same concert with her idol Charice Pempengco, the Philippines’s teen-aged international singing star.
‘Star’ winner in NYC
Lianah is the first Filipina to win back-to-back “Star of Tomorrow” victories at the famous Apollo Theatre amateur singing competitions in New York City. And with her Talents Olympics victory and the way the Filipino American’s her budding musical career is going, she could very well be the next Filipino international star.
If Lianah wins the “Star of Tomorrow” next round of the competitions in September, she will be the first Filipino to make it to the finals of the prestigious event.
Apollo Theatre, known through the years for its Wednesday night amateur singing contests, is the breeding ground of the most successful entertainment stars like that include Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Ella Fitzgerald, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, Billie Holiday, and Tony Bennett, among others.
One of Lianah’s biggest breaks came in front of about 20,000 people at the Madison Square Garden during the New York Knicks’ half-time show “Kidz Bop Sports Jamz” talent search in April. She bested other competitors and won the grand prize of that show.
Big Win
It was a big win for Corpuz who humbly said that this was the first time that she won the grand prize in a singing competition, adding that she has joined many contests in the Philippines.
“In the Philippines, I never made it to the top of the competition, but I never gave up and kept trying,” an ecstatic Corpuz said in Filipino. “Whatever the results, they only served as a challenge. Now, this is the fruit of my persistence.”
Lianah, who started taking formal voice lessons at the age of five, represented the Team USA in what is popularly called the Hollywood Talents Olympics. She made quite an impression on the judges and the audience with his powerful voice that belied her age.
She wore a dress made by famous Filipino-American fashion designers Oliver Tolentino and Robin Tomas, according to a TV report by Balitang America.
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