A group of students dressed in carrot costumes strutted down the runway at Dance Marathon, throwing carrots at the energized crowd.
Dressed as carrots for their namesake color, Team Orange walked away with first place in Dance Marathon’s Color Wars fashion show. Each team showcased creative costumes during the fashion show, all of which were inspired by the letter C, the theme of this year’s Color Wars. Members of the morale team judged the fashion show, announcing the winners at the end of the event.
Before Color Wars, dance crew Taste the Rainbow performed their set featuring songs by Keke Palmer, Ciara, and Nicki Minaj. The LGBTQ dance crew was formed during winter quarter, and decided to perform at Dance Marathon to show students that an all-LGBTQ dance crew exists on campus, as well as to provide a quality performance for the students who are dancing the full 26 hours, said Anthony Martinez,a fourth-year sociology student and executive co-director of the team.
Martinez said HIV and AIDS directly affect the LGBTQ community, making Taste the Rainbow a natural fit to perform at Dance Marathon. Taste the Rainbow tries to incorporate songs by LGBTQ artists into their routines, and tends to use dance styles that relate to the community. One style the group uses is voguing, which is known for movements such as dips, catwalks, and other moves that originated within the LGBTQ community, Martinez said.
“We want (the audience) to get a fun performance, and to show them that dancing is fun, especially if there’s a good cause behind it,” Martinez said.
In third place at the Color Wars competitionwas Team Green. Their mascot, Austin Newton, a third-year business economics student, wore cut-up boxes of Capri Sun over his head and his hands. Newton said he wasn’t sure what he was going to wear to Dance Marathon initially, but made a last minute decision to transformCapri Sun boxes he found in his room into a costume.
Team Purple earned second place with their mascot, Trey Crossley, a second-year electrical engineering student, who sported a sweatshirt covered in stars and galaxies. Crossley said the sweatshirt fit into the “C” theme because it was a “cosmic” design. He said he was nervous initially for the fashion show, but tried to be as dramatic as possible for the crowd, occasionally throwing his arms into the sky during the performance.
“I’m happy with how it came out,” Crossley said. “I was just trying to think of what a runway model would do.”
Fourth-year communication studentAlexia Lieberman,helped pick out the winning team’s carrot costumes. When the event ends, Lieberman will have participatedin the full 26 hours of Dance Marathon for the past three years.
“I think it’s a great cause because you get to work with the kids and actually see who it’s affecting,” Lieberman said.