Sunday, December 05, 2004

Songfest!

Last night, the Order of Omega (a greek honours society) held Songfest, a competition where all chapters that are inclined to do so put on a musical number, with all the singing and dancing normally in such performances. Proceeds go to a different charity every year; this year, they were donated to the BC Burned Children Fund. I, being horribly uncoordinated, was not part of my sorority's performance, so I took part by being on the judging panel. All of the shows were really great. Some groups performed some pretty original selections: Rocky Horror, Willy Wonka. Others picked staples like West Side Story, Cabaret, and Rent. As for my girls, they did a Fosse mix, that included "Sing Sing Sing" and "Hernando's Hideaway". I must profess that I'm not terribly familiar with musicals, but to me it was a good choice, because I'd heard the songs before, but had no preconceptions whatsoever as to how they should be performed (I didn't even know who Fosse was). I'd like to end this paragraph by saying that we WON.

Now, I'm not sure how to say this without bragging, but they were amazing. I tried to make sure I didn't show it too much, but while I was watching from the judges' row, I was physically shaking I was so proud of them. We had at least twice as many people on the stage as anyone else, and the choreography, to me, looked professional. Granted, I can't claim that the girls were at Broadway-caliber level of synchronization, but Dew (who gets major, major props for doing so much ahrdwork, including all the choreography) could have a career in choreography if she wanted.

To warn you, I'm now going to describe some aspects of the performance, in detail, so if you're uninterested, feel free to skip this.

There were two groups of dancers; the "boys", and the "girls". The boys were wearing black pants, black long sleeve shirts, a pink tie, white gloves with pink cuffs, and a black bowler hat with a pink ribbon and a pink feather. The girls wore black dresses (knee length with slits) that had a crossing strap and a pink sash, and a pink, sort of Alice in Wonderland-style hairband, with their hair backcombed a little behind it. The costumes were all the same, because we all made the pink accents together, and Ariko made all the dresses. To measurement. When the first group (the boys) first came on stage, the girls behind me said "they look so good". I'm not going to try to describe the dancing, because really, that never works. I will say, however, that my favourite part was with the canes.

After the show was over, we all went to the Pit to celebrate. I was wearing my new shirt from Express, and actually having a good hair day, and so was feeling pretty good. Plus, I got lots of compliments, which is always nice. I basically just mingled, danced, and danced more. I had a really, really good time, and it was a great way to cap off what has been an unexpectedly good term.

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