Faculty Follies

At the end of March, Mike organized a teacher talent show called "Faculty Follies." The idea was to raise money for a Bulgarian charity that was started by a member of our Board of Trustees called "Protected Home Together Project." In Bulgaria, when orphans turn 18, they are dismissed from their orphanage and, basically, are put out on the street. The Protected Home is literally a home that was built to provide these young adults with a one-year transition program. Job skills are taught and those invested in the organization work very hard to make sure that these young adults get good jobs so that they can make a living for themselves.

When I heard about the show, I thought carefully about my talents and obviously decided upon the fact that I should hip hop dance for my students.

I first gathered the girls who had learned the "Thriller" dance with me from Halloween--and then we decided expand our group (strength in numbers) and splice our act with some "Darrin's Dance Grooves" which you can find on youtube. Darrin is someone who made a dvd (dare I say a living) teaching people the "real" dance moves to N'Sync's "Bye Bye Bye" and Britney Spear's "Crazy." Practicing every Sunday and Thursday for about six weeks, we endured instructive phrases from Darrin such as: "And now we're gonna dance it out."

Dance it out we did. If I do say so myself, the dance was "spot-on." I actually had one student tell me that "they (the students) could never do something that good--ever."

As you can see by the photo-evidence, however, the key part of our dance was the costumes. You can barely see that we are wearing Bulgarian t-shirts under our jackets--complete with Cyrillic letters and a map of "old" Bulgaria, which basically has the country depicted in the "glory days"--that is, Bulgaria in her full stature as she wipes out Macedonia and Greece along the way. Perhaps more eye-catching are the jackets themselves. In case you are doubting yourself--fear not. This is not an optical illusion...no, these are actually hot pink and green sequined blazers purchased in Bulgaria for 10 Leva (5 Euro). It is probably one of the most amazing articles of clothing I own. Not to mention, they were visually "stunning" (we were told) on stage reflecting the spot lights in each and every sequin.

Below you can see an action shot from the "Thriller" dance:



And here--the full faculty finale where we taught the entire audience (about 400 people) the "YMCA dance"...



The final few moments where we had been instructed to "Get into it!!" Mission accomplished:


Not to mention, the bigger mission was certainly accomplished--we raised 1300 Leva for charity, created a new ACS tradition, and got the faculty to come together to work on a really fun project. The only problem? We have set the bar pretty high for next year...and Darrin seems to be a "two hit wonder"....