Riot over US dance competition
Previously only Afro-American sororities were involved in ‘stepping’; lately American universities have seen this type of dance become far more mainstream. And now a white sorority has won an important national dance competition. Not everyone is happy about this.
‘Stepping’, which is something like a hip-hop variation of line dancing and tap dancing, emerged in the middle of the previous century. ‘Greek’ sororities (with names such as Phi Beta Gamma) competed in this new dance. And now a team of predominantly white female students has taken top honours in a traditionally black competition.
Their name is ‘Zeta Tau Alpha’, more specifically their Epsilon subdivision; they study at the University of Arkansas and dance extremely well. With their ‘Matrix’ dance they beat all black competitors in the national Sprite Step-Off Challenge and won a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of study grants. This caused some uproar: the white females were said to have ‘stolen’ the black culture. The judges had to have been so shocked that whites could dance like blacks that they consequently scored them too high.
Sponsor Coca Cola tried to calm things down and talked of ‘scoring discrepancies’. On further consideration, the first place had to be shared and the runners-up, Afro-American ‘Alpha Kappa Alpha Tau’ from Indiana were rewarded the same prize money after all.
However, by far the most reactions were positive and an indication of black culture penetrating mainstream American culture as well as of the fact that the white girls were just better than the rest. As one black student reflected: what would we think if Shani Davis were not allowed to skate because skaters are usually white? Someone else wrote: without white voters we would not even have a black president right now.
For footage of the winning team go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=016C4sUj5_8