You know you’ve climbed to the top in children’s entertainment when you find yourself in heavy rotation on the Treehouse channel. Splash ‘n’ Boots have found themselves in just that situation and are loving every minute of it.
The yellow and blue-clad children’s performers will take part in the Banff Children’s Festival and can’t wait to get both children and parents “Movin’ and Groovin.”
Splash ‘n’ Boots will perform on May 17 in the Margaret Greenham Theatre as part of this year’s festival.
“We are super excited, we haven’t actually performed in Banff but it’s one of our favourite places to visit,” Taes (Boots) Leavitt said on the upcoming performance. “It’s going to be a really interactive, family fun concert, so kids will totally be up dancing, singing and being a part of it the whole time.
“We always tell and remind parents to remember to bring their cameras so they can get ready for some cute pictures. Most of our shows are all about the audience, all about the kids and what they’re doing and how they’re a part of it.”
Leavitt and partner Nick (Splash) Adams first met when they attended Queen’s University and formed a bond through performance.
“We were taking part in a theatre course at Queen’s when we met. Part of the course was to do a show; to write your own show and perform it for kids,” Leavitt said. “After we did the show we decided that we couldn’t do anything else – that was it, we were hooked. We started booking shows ourselves and it just grew from there.”
Leavitt said the act slowly evolved over time before they found a winning formula children have come to love.
“It’s funny to look back at pictures and kind of see what we were doing then. We started out doing more theatre stuff and then we evolved into making music,” said Leavitt. “We were both involved with music growing up. We were involved in both music and theatre and then, along the way, switched over to just music.
“Nick plays guitar, so he writes a lot of the music and then we’ll kind of collaborate on the lyrics and stuff from there. So he’ll come up with the tune and we’ll get together and think about a theme, lyrics and go from there.”
Leavitt says they’re getting more requests from their fans than ever thanks to the growing exposure Splash ‘n’ Boots are receiving on air. “Yeah, we do get a lot of requests, especially now that our songs are on Treehouse – they definitely have favourites from our Treehouse shows, so we always make sure to play all of those from the show.”
She said the duo’s name and outfits were developed over time and with input from the child audiences. “We just kind of thought of Splash ‘n’ Boots and then the kids just started calling us that too. I remember the first time and one of the kids said, ‘who’s Splash and who’s Boots? and we were like, ‘oh! we never thought of that,’ and it just kind of evolved from there.
“We’re pretty booked up for June, July and August right now. We’re doing the Children’s Festival in St. Albert right after Banff and then we’re in Winnipeg for awhile and doing some filming in July. We’ll come back and do some more out West shows and come back to do the CNE,” Leavitt said on their busy summer schedule.
“We’re just really excited to come to Banff, it’s one of our favourite places in Canada so we’re not only looking forward to the show, but seeing the mountains and being there because we’ve heard great things about the festival.”
The children’s festival kicks off (9:30 a.m.) with comedian and juggler Michael Rosman – who uses everything from blenders to fire torches to unicycles. There will be a bouncy castle in the Laszlo Funtek Room, puppetry in Sci-Fi Double Feature, story times and the combination of dance and storytelling with Dini Petty’s The Queen, The Bear and The Bumblebee in Eric Harvie Theatre.
For more info, visit www.banffcentre.ca.
