Oregon State University’s “SING”, a singing and dancing competition that takes place every year will be on May 3 at 7 p.m. in Gill Coliseum. This year’s theme is “Corvallisfest.”
With 11 teams competing this year, each team has put together a five minute dance, while they sing to background music. This year and in past years, different sororities and fraternities pair up. Each team had one artist chosen for all their songs, to replicate a festival by “headlining” their artist. For full teams and their artists visit this link.
Teams began practicing in January, slowly learning all their words and moves. The teams go through two “reviews” where they perform their dances for the SING board, which is composed of students with different jobs surrounding SING, like event specialist or consultant.
Consultants are assigned to one team each and spend the months leading up to SING offering advice to the dancers and coaches.
SING usually consists of teams of 50 students paired together. Throughout the dance they do impressive partner work, including different lifts and turns. This year and in past years, different sororities and fraternities pair up.
One of the teams is a partnership between Sigma Kappa, a sorority at OSU, and Pi Kappa Phi, a fraternity. They are competing with songs by Michael Jackson.
They have three coaches from Sigma Kappa and three from Pi Kappa Phi.
“(Michael Jackson) is obviously known as the king of pop and being a huge performer,” said Riley Bartels, one of the student coaches. “We kind of really took that into mind when we were choreographing for it, and the three of us girl coaches especially, we’re like hunting down videos of Michael Jackson and making sure that we’re putting his signature moves in the dance.”
Bartles reflected on her time of being on the team instead of a coach the previous year, and how she’s tried to tell them how fast this process goes.
“It’s just so fun,” Bartels said. “It brings back the memories from last year, when we had a good time performing.”
Being a coach comes with a lot of pressure and responsibilities, said one of Bartel’s co-coaches, Kayla Liotine.
“It’s definitely been more fulfilling than I had originally thought,” Liotine said. “Because I was super nervous going into it… It’s a lot to get everything planned and to have three to six completely different ideas for the same part in a song.”
On the day of the performance, teams are awarded first, second and third place. Different awards like “consultants choice” and more are also given out. Last year, the winning team was team Chi Omega and Sigma Nu.
“(The participants) keep saying they’re not going to miss it, I’m like ‘you will,’” Bartles said. “In two weeks when the performance happens, you’re going to come off that stage and be like ‘wait, I wish I could do that again.”
Anyone is welcome to watch this event, but tickets are required. You can purchase ahead of time for $20 or at the door for $25, tickets and more information can be found at this link.
