By Lydia Melby, Arts Editor
The stakes are getting higher and practices more intense as ACU gears up for what is perhaps its biggest event of the year: Sing Song. This year, the 53rd annual event is called “Believe,” and its preparations are just as intense as in the years preceding it.
Although Sing Song 2009 may be as traditional as always, it also will have some new features to offer. Along with the usual host and hostess performers, fourteen different acts will participate. These acts showcase most of the men and women’s social clubs on campus, four class acts for each year/classification and the IEH multicultural act comprised of three separate clubs-the International Students Association, Essence of Ebony and Hispanos Unidos.
Anna Peters, senior children and family ministry major from Houston, is one of the co-directors for the IEH act and said, “The three groups are having the time of their life. IEH this year wants to give to Sing Song a taste of cultural competency and how the movement of choreography and music can bring us all together under one roof.”
The IEH act is not the only group reporting significant progress. Hannah Anderson, senior elementary education major from Waco and director of the Sigma Theta Chi act, said her club also is moving right along in its practices.
“We’re just in the stage of perfecting it and polishing up our act. We’ve learned all the words and notes and now we’ve started our choreography,” Anderson said.
Anderson said the process of choosing a theme last semester also went smoothly.
“We’ve been inanimate objects for the past two years, which is funny sometimes, but we decided that it was probably time to be a person,” Anderson said. “I got the idea out of nowhere; I went, ‘Hey, we should be Carmen Sandiego!”
Angela Darden, senior accounting major from Midland and director of the seniors’ class act, said although the seniors had difficulty in the beginning stages of production, they were able to work through those obstacles to make some progress.
“One of our main struggles has been that we had a lot of interest in the beginning, but a lot of those people have gotten busy or stressed out, so we’ve had to try to convince people that our act won’t be as big a time commitment like maybe a club act would be,” Darden said. “It’s more relaxed.We’re just here to have fun.”
Jessica Williams, sophomore English major from Atlanta, said that in directing her sophomore class act, she came across similar problems.
“It’s more difficult since people volunteer, but no one really wants to be in charge of anything, but I have had some helpful people in my act step up and help me out,” Williams said.
Nonetheless, Williams said she has enjoyed directing her class act, which can offer something unique compared to club acts.
“Some of the good things about it is that you have people that are genuinely interested in doing the act, instead of just something you do because you are in club,” she said. “It’s also really neat to have the mixed genders’ voices, so you can have all four parts, which gives you just a really full sound.”
One of the obstacles many groups and clubs face every year is lack of numbers. Isaac Bray, senior music education major from Abilene, said that directing the act for his club, Frater Sodalis, was challenging because of its limited participants. To combat this problem, the members welcomed help from several students outside of their club.
Bray said that although their act was “probably the smallest group this year,” he thought they would be able to still stand out from the other performances.
“The size of our act will be a lot different, but we have a really good musical sound for the size of our group, as well as a lot of one-liners and Monopoly theme that makes it pretty entertaining,” Bray said. “We also incorporate a lot of songs people know, older and newer songs, so we can please everyone in the audience.”
Carly Smith, junior nursing major from Austin and director of the Delta Theta act, agreed that smaller numbers could be a challenge, but they would not weaken their act in the least.
“We decided to go a bit of a different route this year and not concentrate so much on vocals but more on the props and making the act really funny,” Smith said. “I think our act will provide some great comic relief. We’re using some really fun, new songs, like the kind of song you hear in your car and turn up and jam out to when it comes on the radio.”
Performances of ACU Sing Song “Believe” 2009 are scheduled for Feb. 20-21, in Moody Coliseum. Tickets range from $14-$22, and have been on sale since Nov. 3.
