At 4:45 PM on Friday, we had been called for an extra dress rehearsal because the lights and sound had not been ready during the originally planned rehearsal the day before. This meant, of course, that people started showing up around 5 PM – unfortunately for the directors, "Ebony time" runs a bit later than CST, given everyone's busy schedules. We changed into our costumes (with no separate changing rooms for men and women, which tested the boundaries of some people's ideas of modesty, but hey, it's Ebony) and ran the show once exactly as it would be performed in a few hours. With the empty bleachers and the sunlight still streaming in through the windows in the ceiling, this whole thing was a bit surreal.
Once my friends and I had all finished our dances, we ran off to gulp down dinner at Burton. It was about 6:15 when we got there; we were called for group rehearsal at 6:30, but we figured we could make it. Little did we know that for once, "Ebony time" was accurate, and when we came back our group dance had already happened. Oh well – we'd been rehearsing it backstage anyway, or rather, we'd been rehearsing the ridiculous faces we would make at certain points in the dance.
After group rehearsal, it was time to get ready in earnest. There were a couple announcements/admonishments from the directors – stay in the locker rooms at all times when you're not performing; remember to smile; if you eat in West Gym you will be drawn and quartered; have fun – and then the customary "Ebony stars", little metallic star stickers to put on your face and body and mark yourself as a performer, were passed around. I saw some very creative applications of these stars, especially among the members of the Mandance (explained in more detail later) – on Saturday night, when they took their shirts off in the middle of the dance (as is customary), there was everything from nipple stars to a line of stars down the stomach to a few stars along the crotch of a pair of short-shorts, just to draw attention to that area.
At this point, the locker room was an absolute frenzy of activity. Each and every mirror in the whole place was being used by at least five girls putting on makeup. (Some of the makeup was pretty extreme – think bright magenta lipstick and turquoise glittery eyeliner.) My partner in my first dance was in the hallway having her hair sprayed and teased out to ridiculous proportions. (My first dance was set to You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC and Something Good 08 by Utah Saints. We had been calling it "You Shook Me Something Good", but somehow in the program it ended up being called "Bring It to the Bedroom, Bring It to the Club". The somewhat terrible naming is pretty consistent across the dances – Mandance, the traditional all-male, explicitly sexual/hilarious number, which was set to Love Game by Lady Gaga, was called "Men Looking for a Love Game.")
If you walked through the crowd, or rather pushed, you would occasionally come across terrified-looking men having liquid eyeliner applied to them by their female friends. "It'll make your eyes pop!" the girls would say, and the guys would complain about how gross it felt. One of my male friends refused to go through this, and had to run from a group of girls with their hearts set on doing his eyes. The dancers of a tribal medley set to music by Animal Collective were covering their hands in face paint and making handprints on each other's faces.
We were putting on costumes seriously now, and they were a sight to be seen. My first costume consisted of a bright orange tank top, an off-the-shoulder black shirt, a black leather belt, neon pink matching headband and wristbands, and to top it all off, a pair of shiny black fake leather pants. ("80s aerobics dominatrix" was the essential concept.) There were shiny blue spandex bodysuits, choir robes, sequin-covered 80s prom dresses, a pair of cutoffs with "Maneater" printed on the butt, heaps and piles of bling, and the legions of Mandance dancers in their short-shorts, mostly borrowed from various girls. The noise was almost deafening; the excitement grew with every minute as the 8:00 showtime approached.
Just before the show started, we were shushed by the customary Ebony getting-everyone-to-be-quiet cue (one of the directors yelling "And a hush fell over the crowd", and everyone responding by screaming "Hush!") Then we did a sort of pump-up cheer, with everyone singing: "We are Ebony! I got all my dancers with me! We are Ebony! Get up everybody and dance!" My dance was second on the program, so I immediately went to wait in the wings with my fellow dancers, listening for the music from the first dance (Joyful Joyful from Sister Act 2) to end so that we could rush out onto the stage. As we did, I felt a sudden rush of nerves and adrenaline. We couldn't see the audience at all; it was too dark, and I wondered who was out there. Who was I performing for in my fake leather pants?
As soon as the lights came up and the audience saw us all in our matching headbands, they started screaming, and didn't stop pretty much all the way through the dance. This dispelled my nerves almost completely, until I was just ecstatically happy to be out there performing. The only performances I'd done in the past had been with my high school band and jazz band, and the audience had generally been quiet until the end of each song, so I'd never experienced the intense high of being cheered on through the actual performance. I couldn't stop smiling even when we were supposed to put on our "game faces" for the second song.
After that dance ended, there was mass confusion because we'd taken off our outer layers of clothing and thrown them aside, and no one knew which was theirs in the dark. We all just ended up grabbing whatever we came across and sorting it out in the locker room. I didn't feel nervous at all now, even though I had another dance coming up in a few minutes, and it was the one I didn't know as well. The first dance had taken all the nerves out of me, I guess. Still, it was hard to wait until my second dance, especially with everyone still rushing around like crazy in the locker room.
The second dance was relatively uneventful. I think I did reasonably well, or at least not badly enough to get noticed (it was a pretty technical hip-hop medley, and having never danced before at all, I found it hard to even remember all the moves, let alone perform them well). Afterwards was intermission, during which some people snuck out to try to get a look at the audience (not me, of course. I would never do a thing like that). When it was all over, I realized almost none of my friends had been there that night anyway. Then I realized something: that meant they would all be coming the next day. I better not mess up tomorrow, I thought.
Tomorrow came very quickly. We gathered at 6:15 and warmed up by doing one move from each dance, then sat in a huge circle and massaged each other's shoulders to relieve tension. There were some announcements, then boom, it was time to get ready again. Makeup rush, changing rush, Ebony star rush. Some friends and I took excessive amounts of pictures making ridiculous faces (including me and my partner from You Shook Me attempting to look sexy and failing repeatedly). Then I was on again, and even more nervous than the last time. Luckily, the audience didn't let me down, and I rode their cheers until my knees stopped shaking. Thank you, loud audience.
The mood in the locker room that night was even more exuberant, among the seniors especially, for whom it was their last Ebony ever (which I saw as really sad, but seemed to bring out the celebratory spirit in them.) Apparently senior dance was a sight to be seen that night. And at the end of the night, when we all came back out on stage and danced to Footloose (instead of everyone taking a bow), I felt swept up by the mass of flailing, triumphant bodies, which overflowed off the stage and into the bleachers to dance with the audience. I had never been a part of such a completely joyful group project before. I can't wait till fall when I can do it again. Who knows – I might even get an opportunity to dust off the leather pants.