ALES Dance
“The dance was pretty good...and the DJ was amazing,”
As layers of snow blanketed the campus paths, students slowly entered Grainger Auditorium layered in thick sweatpants and jackets. The beat of the bass thumped against the walls: Exonians were welcomed by the sounds of hip hop and a variety of popular music to enter. The annual dance hosted by the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society (ALES).
Unlike last year, no other schools in the region were able to attend the regional dance due to the winter storm, which left over six inches of snow across campus. Upper Tise Okeremi expressed her disappointment but believed that students enjoyed the dance nonetheless. “It was unfortunate that other schools couldn’t come, but [the] people who showed up seemed to have a lot of fun,” she said.
Exonians who attended the dance jammed out to popular songs like “Mo Bamba” and “7 Rings”. Colored lights added to the bright atmosphere and music played from the DJ booth as Jasmine Solano turned up her tunes for the night. Solano has been featured at several of PEA’s dances over the past years, including the popular Back in Black hosted by Dunbar Hall as well as the 2018 ALES Dance. As an international DJ, she has performed for MTV, Sony, Apple, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and DKNY. She has also found success touring with renowned artists such as Wiz Khalifa and highly anticipated festivals such as the Coachella Music Festival in April of 2017.
As one of few popular female DJs, Solano was invited by ALES this year for her fifth dance at Exeter. Despite the slow turnout of students at the dance, prep Tasmiah Akter enjoyed the dance and especially commended Solano. “The dance was pretty good...and the DJ was amazing,” she said.
Although many praised Solano’s set, others were not as excited. “She played good songs; it’s just that sometimes the good songs weren’t good dancing songs,” upper Talia Rivera said. She expressed her displeasure with the fact that the English version of “Despacito” played at the dance despite the Latinx theme. Plus, the song was changed before a significant amount of the original Spanish parts could be heard.
According to Okeremi, some students thought this dance to be “more of an AES dance,” rather than ALES, commenting on the lack of Latinx music played at the dance. “Even [for] the ones she played, you couldn’t really dance to them,” Okeremi said.
Many students attributed the low turnout to the unplowed snow which had accumulated on the sidewalks, as the Campus Facilities crew’s hours had ended. “There weren’t as many people there as other dances,” Akter added. For this reason, she decided to only stay for a short amount of time. Although a divider in Grainger had left only half of the dance floor open, the room was relatively empty.
“It took a really long time for the place to fill up, and even then it didn’t truly fill up,” Okeremi said. “I feel like people were disappointed that no other schools came.”
Despite the low student turnout, the dance was considered a success by many students because of the final song. After Solano thanked ALES for inviting her at the end of the dance, she closed her set by playing an original single by lower Osiris Russell-Delano. Russell-Delano danced on the stage surrounded by friends as students gathered around the booth. The song ended with cheers and laughter and the 2019 ALES dance came to a close. “It was really cool to see everyone in the crowd singing back the lyrics...that was really affirming,” Russell-Delano said.