Day Camp Hosts "Summerscape's Best Dance Crew"

On Thursday night, l’s auditorium featured many elements familiar to fans of televised talent competitions: costumed performance teams, outrageously attired judges, a capacity crowd who booed vigorously when they disagreed with scores, comedy sketches, and slickly-produced video clips. However, the school was not guest-hosting an episode of a reality show contest.

Instead, the auditorium was the site of “," which was this year’s theme for the day camp’s end of the summer talent show. Patterned after "America’s Best Dance Crew," the Summerscape variation featured teams from grades one through nine.

The groups performed to medleys comprised mostly of pop songs. Standout performers included “3B Keeps it G,” who was a third grade boy who wore shirts and ties and performed to a 50s rock-heavy soundtrack, the glow-stick-themed fourth grade “Glow-Go Girls," and the Latin music featured fifth grade “Las Chicas Buenas.”

Three wacky judges who for some reason wore superhero garb scored the crews. The judges were eighth grade students and evaluated different aspects of each performance, including music, technique, and costumes.

The host of the show was “Michael," a high school student who served as a Summerscape counselor. He played a credible straight man to the judges’ clowning.

Every team received the same score, which the host and judges turned into a running joke throughout the evening.

Audience members played their part by jeering low scores, although their boos became half-hearted, once they realized every team would inevitably end up with 24 points.

Also, in a bow to most reality shows, the real star of the program was its production. From the opening Star Wars-themed scrolling captions on the projector screen and the Rocky-inspired clips showing the production crew working out in preparation for the night to the series of TV ad-spoofs and tightly scripted dialogue. The event was less about the teams’ performances and more about the totality of the show itself.

After the final performance, Michael closed the show by announcing that their “network” had renewed the program for next year. If the spectacle is anything like this year, then it will have no trouble bringing back viewers.