Step teams battle for fame and glory

Nick Bonadies
Spectrum Editor

A massive crowd stifled the entrance to the Siegel Center this Saturday evening awaiting entrance to this year’s Fall Block Step Show.  Fall Block, a staple of the VCU fall semester and the biggest and most-attended step show in the state, celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.

With this year’s theme, “Stepping Through the Decades,” the participating National Pan-Hellenic Council fraternities and sororities – the “Divine Nine” – paid tribute to the event’s history, as well as to their NPCH alumni forbearers.

The crowd glowed in the dim blue light of a few thousand glowsticks. The Siegel Center, decked out in this year’s Fall Block colors – silver, for the 25th anniversary, and teal – was packed with ecstatic spectators and Greek supporters, many of whom would later take the free shuttle service to the Fall Block afterparty at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

By the end of the first set, a ’90s hip-hop throwback by Phi Beta Sigma, the crowd was already dancing and singing to the music in the stands and in the aisles, and hardly stopped for the rest of the night.

Each team incorporated their organization’s own traditions, moves and stepping style into a 10-to-15-minute performance that included, in addition to the step routines, skits, singing and custom videos.  Crowd favorites included Iota Phi Theta, whose routine acted out R. Kelly’s “Contagious”; Zeta Phi Beta, who set their 1965 time-travel segment to a performance of “We Shall Overcome”; and Sigma Gamma Rho, whose team donned gray wigs in a reenactment of the opening sequence to “The Golden Girls.”

In the end though, by deliberation of a panel of judges from each of the fraternities and sororities, Delta Sigma Theta’s “Resurrection at the Fall Block Museum” won first place for females, and Kappa Alpha Psi’s time-traveling mobster heist routine won first place for males.  Each team won a cash prize for their chapter and an impressive trophy – as well as, of course, bragging rights.

The Greeks weren’t the only ones to leave Fall Block with prizes: one lucky audience member, in a pre-awards raffle, won a ticket to the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards.  (MCs Sean Anthony and Keith Jones, from WCDX FM Power 92.1, were quick to clarify that the prize did not, in fact, include airfare – “You’re gonna have to get a ride.”)

Check out these photos from the show for an up-close and personal look at each of the Divine Nine’s performances at this year’s stellar 25^th anniversary Fall Block.  CT

[Graphics: For this it’d be neat to have a layout with one or more photos from each team’s performance with an extended caption.]

1/ Men of Step – This group, formed out of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, was awarded the chance to step at Fall Block for its performance in the Richmond Area High School Step Show last Monday at the Commons.  The group’s outfits showed a certain VCU appreciation.

2/ Phi Beta Sigma – “We’re gonna go back. – Way back. – Back into time.”  Replete with schoolkid uniforms and bookbags, Phi Beta Segma stepped to a retrospective of 90s old-school hip-hop, including Guy’s “Teddy Jam.”

3/ Sigma Gamma Rho – The lovely ladies of Sigma Gamma Rho opened with a video recreating the opening sequence and theme song from “The Golden Girls,” dressed to the nines in gray wigs and bifocals.  But there was nothing old about the stepping that followed, which included a treacherous segment with walking canes, blindfolds and expertly-timed dodging.

4/ Omega Psi Phi – Revealing a trend that would continue the rest of the evening, Omega Psi Phi observed that removal of shirts equals instant crowd points.  (For part of the audience, at least.)  Their strobe-lit routine climaxed at a slow-motion sequence to the theme from “Chariots of Fire.”

5/ Zeta Phi Beta – Taking a futurist bent, Zeta Phi Beta traveled back in time from 2025 on “Mission Z,” traveling to various decades to “learn harmony, precision, attitude and swag – through step.”  The audience particularly loved the segment set in 1965, set to the team singing “We Shall Overcome” and featuring a routine done entirely sitting down.

6/ Iota Phi Theta – This set followed the tale of a young man who discovers his lover cheating on him – the crowd sang along in most parts, especially the climactic confrontation danced to R. Kelly’s  “Contagious.”  An impressive “fight” routine followed between the young man and the “other man,” wielding wooden canes.

7/ Kappa Alpha Psi – Easily the most rhythmically infectious set, Kappa Alpha Psi – in classy mob vests and ties – worked around video segments of a time-travelling heist to steal various step techniques from the past three decades.

8/ Delta Sigma Theta – To a dance remix of the theme from “Mission Impossible,” Delta Sigma Theta breaks into the heavily-guarded “Fall Block Museum” to bring the VCU tradition back from the dead, headed by an intense lead solo stepper.

9/ Alpha Phi Alpha – Fall Block does “Inception.”  A frustrated Alpha Phi Alpha member, with an hour before showtime and no routine planned, makes a call to a team of dream infiltrators to plant the perfect choreography in his Stepmaster’s brain, a la Christopher Nolan.  “Is this a dream or am I awake? … Whatever it is, I’m about to make something crazy.”