What better way is there to celebrate Homecoming weekend at EMU than watching your favorite television shows from the past? It would probably be even better if you could get all of the same laughs you did growing up without feeling like a bum for spending the entire day at home in your pajamas watching these shows. The National Pan-Hellenic Council assisted in making this dream come true by hosting their annual step show Oct. 1 in Pease Auditorium.
The tickets were $8 in advance and $10 at the door. The NPHC included a competition between Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated (Epsilon Eta Chapter), Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Incorporated (Zeta Epsilon Chapter) and Iota Phi Theta Fraternity Incorporated (Gamma Rho Chapter). The show also included a performance by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated (Xi Chapter) and performances by groups such as the Patchwork Dance Group.
The theme of the step show was “In Living Color” and focused on popular television shows from the past. It was the job of each fraternity and sorority to come up with a television show they wanted to use for their theme and also use props, costumes, music and slide shows for each performance. The step show had five judges to judge the performances and included a cash prize of $500 for the winning team.
Brittni Brown, junior member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated and Brian Taylor, senior member of Alpha Phi Alpha, organized the step show.
“The NPHC wanted to give people something to enjoy during the Homecoming weekend,” Brown said.
They informed the other members of the NPHC and started planning for the step show in June.
“My job was to take care of the logistical things like insurance, flyers and making sure things were paid for,” Taylor said.
Brown’s jobs included planning, promoting and event coordination. Both Brown and Taylor stressed precision and incorporation of the theme to the participating fraternities and sorority. Though the event was successful, the planning was still hard.
“The hardest part of planning for me was coming up with the theme,” Brown said.
The first to perform were the Sigmas using “Family Matters” as their television theme. All of the steppers came out on stage dressed as the popular “Family Matters” character “Steve Urkel” with flooding pants, suspenders and bifocals. Their performance included stepping as well as skits between another “Steve Urkel” and his love interest “Laura Winslow.” The performance ended with the Urkel character coming out as his alter ego the attractive “Stefan Urkelle” as seen in the show and winning over Winslow’s affections.
The next to perform were the Iotas, and their theme was the television show “Unsolved Mysteries.” They included a video projection of a member acting as the host of the show and the steppers came out dressed in business wear like the host Robert Stacks.
After the Iotas, the AKA’s performed using “Soul Train” as their theme. They included music from the 1970s-1990s along wiwth costume changes to fit with each era. In between their stepping performance other members of the sorority came out and did humorous commercials.
The last fraternity to compete were the Alphas, who used the popular show “Martin” and included very popular and comical characters such as Martin, Tommy, Cole, Jerome, Bruh Man from the fifth floor and Dragon Fly Jones. The audience laughed hysterically at the antics from the steppers as they performed popular scenes from the show.
Overall the audience seemed to enjoy the entire show. Kenyatta Williams, junior, had never attended a step show at EMU and really enjoyed it.
“I really like the Alphas version of ‘Martin’ and I would definitely come again next year,” she said.
After deliberation, the judges announced the Sigmas were the winners of the step show.
Alton Smith, senior and former president of the fraternity was very excited about the win.
“We worked the hardest on precision and also no shamming (which is a term some fraternities and sororities use that means not being lazy),” Smith said.
They came up with the theme of “Family Matters” collectively and practiced for around two months for 2-3 times a week and increased the amwount of practices as it got closer to the day of the event.
According to Smith this isn’t going to be the fraternity’s only performance, “We are stepping anytime there’s a step show now and hoping to win.”
