HawkTalk
Christian Grotewold On campus

The Road To Songfest

The Theta Chi brothers and their choreographers.
The Theta Chi brothers and their choreographers.

My favorite time of year came and went so fast; we danced, we sang, we joyed, we sweated — Songfest was a blast! All the Greek organizations, along with Nubian Student Union and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, were part of this singing and dancing competition. Each organization had a total of 8 minutes to put on a good performance, and I must say that they all were fantastic. The crowd went wild every time someone danced to a popular song. A special congratulations to Alpha Omicron Pi for winning first place!

But Songfest was not just one evening. It took a lot of planning. Theta Chi had a total of 23 participants competing in Songfest, so coordinating that number of boys and having them all together for rehearsals was a big challenge. We started planning March 8th, the day before Spring Break, and it was a little hectic because some of us had to plan during our Spring Break (and you know where I was over break!). By the end of that first day, we had our theme established: "I Wish I Was Cool."

The girls amazed by one of the popular kids.
The girls amazed by one of the popular kids.

I began to choose songs that could  fit into that theme, and rounded up a total of 322 songs. We were only allowed to submit 35 songs, so I had to delete quite a lot. Once we had our song list established, we submitted it for review and received back a list of approved songs.

Then it was time to pick out 10 songs to put into a storyline that appealed to the audience. The songs we picked were: Hey Mickey, Dancing With Myself, American Idiot, La Macarena, Thriller, Pop, Pop Lock and Drop It, Just Dance, Magic, and Moves Like Jagger. Here's the storyline we came up with (follow me here):

The nerds dancing with themselves.
The nerds dancing with themselves.

These four nerds walk into a dance and see four very attractive girls, and they decide to talk to them. The girls, seeing that they are not cool, reject them instantly and go dance with one of the popular kids (Hey Mickey). So the nerds were left by themselves (Dancing With Myself), wishing they were cool. All of a sudden, one of the kids at the dance tells them that in order to be cool, they need to know how to rock and roll (American Idiot). One of the nerds tries a very generic and popular dance to be cool (La Macarena), but is not successful. After seeing this poor attempt, another kid steps in and shows them how to dance to Michael Jackson (Thriller). Another student steps in and tells them that Thriller is overdone and that boy bands are what makes people cool (Pop). After this song, the most popular kid walks in and teaches them his cool way of dancing (Pop Lock and Drop It). One of the girls then realizes that everyone has their own way of dancing, so she decides to encourage everyone to just dance (Just Dance). The next number portrays the transformation of the nerds into Theta Chi brothers because they realized that they were cool all along (Magic). The finale was a big dance number were the nerds dance with the four girls they had seen at the beginning, and demonstrate that they had all the moves from the very beginning (Moves Like Jagger).

Moves Like Jagger.
Moves Like Jagger.

Rehearsals to pull this off were intense, and we ended every night drenched in sweat. During the final two days we finally had everything put together and the happiness we felt was incredible. Our energy was very high before we went on stage; we gave it our all and could not believe it was over that fast. Once the competition was over, the judges handed out awards for small categories, and Theta Chi won "Crowd Favorite." We were so happy for this award — it meant that we did what we wanted to do: entertain the crowd. I cannot wait for next year's Songfest!

The nerds become Theta Chi brothers!
The nerds become Theta Chi brothers!