Tri Sigma sisters won the Chi O Night Live dance competition, raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in the process (Photo Thea Toocheck/The Gettysburgian)
By Thea Toocheck, Staff Writer
We stood backstage, holding hands in a circle and trembling with excitement. After many hours of practice, Chi O Night Live had arrived.
Every fall, Chi Omega hosts a dance competition as their philanthropy event to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This year, the emcees announced, they raised over $5,000 to help children’s dreams come true.
New members of each fraternity present their talents at Chi O Night, drawing much admiration from the crowd. The new sorority members, on the other hand, present a dance number to be judged. I am a member of Tri Sigma, and the pressure was on to continue the winning streak of the past two years.
For me, at least, this was a good kind of pressure; it nudged us new members into taking the dance seriously, which meant that everyone participating showed up to rehearsals and gave it their all.
Though rehearsals sometimes ran late and some of us had never danced in front of a crowd before, our fifteen-member group had so much fun putting together a dance that ended up being almost six minutes long. I used to take dance classes and had forgotten how much fun they were; though I had some experience, I was nevertheless amazed by the incredible job Maddy Casey ‘21 and Sarah Kotchey ‘21 did choreographing the entire thing. They also picked great songs, including “7/11” by Beyoncé and ABBA’s iconic “Dancing Queen.”
Knowing how hard we had worked on our own dance, it was exciting to see the routines from the other sororities, who all had very impressive dances.
Thus, we were nervous as the event came to a close and the emcees prepared to announce the winners. Delta Gamma came in third, and Alpha Delta Pi got second. All of Tri Sigma held its breath as they made to announce the winner.
We had won! We burst into cheers, hugging each other in elation. We celebrated not only accomplishing a three-peat but the amazing new friendships we had forged in the process.
Evidently (to co-opt some lyrics from ABBA and DLow), our “dancing queens” are a “dream team.”
