On Saturday, Feb. 16, the Kingswood Oxford SGA hosted the annual winter dance in the dining hall. The theme of the dance was advertised as “Tight and Bright,” but essentially it was a neon theme. The dance created a lot of buzz and controversy but ended up as a success. The theme “Tight and Bright” may have been misinterpreted, but the SGA wanted to emphasize our tight-knit community at the dance and by using “tight” they meant it as awesome and fun.
The theme idea came up as most other boarding schools do a “Tight and Bright” dance at some time in the year. “Personally, I wanted to pick a cool name for it,” Form 4 Vice President Sloan Duvall said, “and ‘Tight and Bright’ is something I’ve heard other schools do. It’s also a catchy and fun name!” Form 4 President Emma Henry said she agreed with Sloan that the name for the dance was catchy. “It was a pretty clever name that got people excited and talking about it,” she said. “We knew we wanted to do a black light dance,” Sloan said. “KO hasn’t done a blacklight dance in a really long time.” Emma said blacklight dances seem to draw in a large crowd, and the last time there was a black light dance, people seemed to enjoy it. “It was a big success, so I thought the same would happen with the dance we had this year,” she said.
A lot of planning and preparation went into the dance. “Big shoutout to Sloan Duvall for all of her vision of how everything would get set up,” SGA faculty advisor Mela Frye said. “We had glow sticks from the ceiling and then there was neon tape wrapped around the columns.” Additionally, to complement the neon theme of the dance, the organizers purchased special decorations to light up the dance floor. “We ordered four blacklight cannons which means that everyone was glowing on the dance floor,” Emma said. In addition to the new black lights for this dance, the SGA got the special effect lighting package which includes strobe lights, lasers, and other colored lights.
The DJ from Homecoming was very popular, so SGA brought him back to DJ this dance. “We had given him some other requests because I think there had been some complaints there was too much of sort of one genre,” Mrs. Frye said. She said that this offered a greater variation of songs more people would enjoy.
As always, there were different “Tight and Bright” themed extras. “We had a new photo backdrop, a special Snapchat geofilter, themed decorations, and we gave out some surprises to people who came,” Sloan said. The turnout for the dance was more than 150 people. “Last year’s winter dance it was around 70 to 80, so I’d call this dance a success,” Mrs. Frye said.
Like all SGA events this year, the money was donated to Grace Academy and Covenant Prep. These are two schools in Hartford that are funded entirely from the outside. SGA picked these schools to donate to so the kids in these schools can get the supplies they need. “It’s really important to us that people in our community receive the help they need,” Emma said. They raised over $100 for the schools at this event.
Sloan said that the dance was a bigger success than predicted, similar to Homecoming. “The Student Government was happy to put on another event that built community, relieves stress, and also raised money for a great cause, she said. “Thank you to everyone who came. We are excited to continue planning events like these for our wonderful community.”
