Step squads conjoined this past Saturday in Page Commons to perform and celebrate their love of step dance.

Get 2 Steppin' performance brings down the house

By: Chelsea Eakin

Posted: 11/14/07

Page Commons was standing room only on Saturday for the first annual Colby Step Show entitled Get 2 Steppin'. Students, faculty and Waterville residents gathered to cheer on two Colby teams (Colby Step Team and DYNASTY Step Squad), three visiting teams and a local team from the Alfond Youth Center that has been coached by DYNASTY. The Colby Dance Team, two student poets and two rappers from Bowdoin College performed as well.

Colby Step Team Captain Escar Kusema '09 opened the show by saying that stepping is about "passion, expression and identity." Step is a synchronized, percussive movement that involves singing, speaking, chanting and drama and uses the body as an instrument for expression. Before the teams took the stage, a slide show explained two hypotheses about the origin of step-South Africa gumboot dancing and African-American fraternities at Howard University. Gumboot dancing originated in the gold mines of South Africa with rural laborers and became part of urban South African working-class culture. At the height of the migrant labor system and during the oppressive Apartheid Pass Laws, gumboot dancing provided an outlet for communication and personal expression. The slideshow said that stepping was incorporated into the pledging process of African-American fraternities and sororities in the 1940s.

First to step was Bowdoin's Unity, a team which stands for the values of knowledge, power, respect and love. The coed team started dancing to music, but once the music cut out the team didn't fail to keep the energy high and its steps synchronized.
Shapel Mallard '08 then slowed it down with a poem about step. Following his reading, two Bowdoin rappers dropped lyrics while Unity stepped a background beat. The audience clapped along and participated in a call and response of "I love hip hop."

Next up was the Colby Step Team, founded in 2003 with a focus on inclusiveness and teaching others. Emcee Peter Perry-Friedman '09 said that the team comprises members from all over the world: "China, Zimbabwe, India, Brazil and wait for it...Connecticut." The team's performance was nearly flawless as it stepped in unison, in rounds, while moving across the stage and while standing still.

Wearing multicolored shirts and numbering upwards of 20 (by far the biggest team), the Bentley College steppers filled the stage from end to end. With contagious energy, they had the audience shouting, laughing and clapping along.

After a poem from JC Chang '10, Showstoppers, the team from the Alfond Youth Center whose members range in age from 5 to 18, began its performance with spunk and attitude. "We have been working with them since the end of the past spring semester," Jessica Williams '10, a member of DYNASTY, said. "They are a great group of girls who are talented and dedicated. They were utterly amazing and inspiring tonight." Many of their parents were in the audience and the performance met a big applause.

The audience was left with a jaw-dropping performance by BlackOut, an all-male performing arts collective from Tufts. Wearing camouflage vests, the team did a comical dramatization of being in the army, pausing from its seamless coordination only to make witticisms that the audience received with uproarious laughter.

"The show was more than I thought it could ever be and it's humbling to realize that it was actually bigger than us," Kusema said, thanking everyone who helped sponsor the event. "It was a first for Colby and we are making it an annual event hopefully continuing to [build] on those relationships we have with DYNASTY Step Squad and the other schools that performed."