White Girls Can Step

I read the story and watched the videos. I encourage you to do the same before reading on.

You’re finished? Okay, let’s go. . .

I purposely watched the AKA and DST vids first and I thought, “how could the Zeta Tau Alpha’s (ZTAs) top THAT?” and then I watched them.

Whoa.

They brought it – regardless of race, they rocked it imperial. But don’t get it twisted. . . their fundamentals came from the originators.

I’ve been to many a step show competition in my day and the ZTAs moves were borrowed heavily from <insert BGLO* here>. But they had intensity, stamina and actually STEPPED throughout with just a small musical intro and outro.

Have I seen better step performances in my day? Definitely. The ZTAs went old school and stuck to the fundamentals sans heavy dramatics (i.e., excessive music, dance moves > actual stepping). They maintained their energy, synchronicity and rhythm. Comparatively (to the other performance vids in the article), they did the best job and my conclusion has nothing to do with race.

But after more than 100 years of BLGO representation and the INVENTION of stepping, why did it take ZTAs interpretation of our craft for it to be declared “mainstream?”

Just a thought.

This entry was written by Fave, posted on 24 February 10 at 4:35 pm, filed under Thoughts. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.