Although most associate Green Key with outdoor festivities, the weekend will also feature two student dance performances this year Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity's annual Step Show and the Dartmouth Dance Theater Ensemble's "Undue Influence."
Alpha Phi Alpha's 20th annual Step Show will be held Saturday in Leede Arena. Doors open at 7:30 pm, and between 1,500 and 2,000 people are expected to attend, according to David Johnson '11, a member of the fraternity and coordinator of the event.
Six groups will perform in the show, including Alpha Phi Alpha, Lambda Upsilon Lambda fraternity, Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, Ujima, Sheba and Staccato. All eight members of Alpha Phi Alpha will perform in the Step Show, Johnson said.
Because they host the show every year, it did not take the members of Alpha Phi Alpha long to organize this year's performance, Johnson said. The arena has been reserved since January and members of Alpha Phi Alpha have been working on their performance throughout the term.
The show as a whole does not have a unifying theme, but Alpha Phi Alpha's performance plot is designed around the movie "The Hangover" (2009). Johnson would not go into specifics about the performance, but said that the group thought it would be relevant with the upcoming release of the movie's sequel, "The Hangover 2."
Alpha Phi Alpha members have high hopes for this year's performance, Johnson said. With the addition of Staccato in the past few years, the number of step groups performing now exceeds the number of dance groups, Johnson said. The caliber of the performances has also increased since this change, he said.
"Adding another stepping group made everyone step their game up," Johnson said.
Unlike Alpha Phi Alpha's Step Show, the Dartmouth Dance Ensemble's performance is not a Green Key tradition, according to theater professor and Director of the Dance Ensemble Ford Evans.
"This will be the second time in 13 years that we do a Green Key performance," Evans said.
The show, titled "Undue Influence," is about sexual violence on college campuses, Evans said.
Selecting Green Key weekend for the date of the performance was not intentional, Evans said.
"In some ways it's the perfect weekend," Evans said. "In other ways, will people decide to be in the theater to see this really exciting work, or will they be outside because the weather is so nice and there's lots of parties to go to?"
