KUCHING: Sarawak’s outstanding young talent, Aleysha Shareef Van Der Horst, left for New York, the United States of America (USA), earlier today to attend a one-month summer programme with the New York Film Academy (NYFA).
Aleysha is attending the programme through the NYFA’s scholarship award that she won at the 27th World Championships of Performing Arts (WCOPA) in Los Angeles last year.
She will be joined by four other recipients from among the hundreds of participants through some 70 countries who participated at the 2024 WCOPA competition.
“I feel very honoured and excited to have been selected by NYFA for a hands-on intensive programme that they have lined up for us,” Aleysha remarked before her departure.
She added that “this award-winning programme forms part and parcel of my learning process into the entertainment industry”.
Aleysha won one gold medal, one bronze medal and a plaque for the Under-12 Division singles vocal category, and another gold medal and a bronze medal with her twin brother, Ryan Zachary, in the under-12 duet vocal category at Los Angeles a year ago.
Last Saturday, Aleysha was on a winning note again after she wowed the jury and the full-house crowd at the RTM’s P. Ramlee Auditorium with her rendition of ‘Gemilang’, her first Bahasa Melayu singing competition, to win one of the two coveted slots at the ‘Bintang Kecil RTM Sarawak’ Finals to represent Sarawak at the Grand National/ASEAN Level Finals on September 20.
The next few months will be a hectic one for Aleysha, who just turned 12 in May this year.
“Besides the ‘Bintang Kecil’ Grand National/ASEAN Finals to prepare for, I am also progressing on recording my first demo single in Los Angeles,” she said.
She left on Friday with her mother, Shirley Hasmani Eddie, and her twin brother, Ryan Zachary.
Her father, who is Dutch, will join them in New York from the Netherlands.
NYFA is a popular private for-profit film and acting school based in New York, Los Angeles and Manhattan, USA.
It was founded in 1992 by Jerry Sherlock, a former film, television and theatre producer.