Ken Xclusive from America’s Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance hosted the Variety Show for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. The event was held at the Center for the Arts at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 12. Xclusive started the show by cracking a joke about how cold it gets in the Midwest, which got a roar of laughter from the audience.

“So cold that it will go through cotton, polyester, hopes and dreams and it ruins relationships,” Xclusive said.

The Pioneer dance team kicked off the performances for the night by dancing a choreographed routine to “Sax” by Fleur East.

Second up was Bridgeway Commons. They had a mixture of songs they lip-synced to, but William Keiffer was the star of the performance. When he went to do a quick change into his outfit for Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” his shorts came down accidently revealing his underwear, resulting in an abundance of laughter from the crowd.

Other songs in the performance included “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” and “Gangnam Style”.

Xclusive then performed a story with song clips, mostly from Michael Jackson. The narrator would describe a beautiful woman and then he would lip-sync the words to “PYT (Pretty Young Thing)”.

The next performances were performed by resident assistants and residents from Dobson and Hugunin Hall. Dobson lip-synced to songs like “Shut Up & Dance” and some songs from the Beach Boys. Hugunin did a mashup of Beyoncé, Jason Derulo and concluded with “We Are the World”.

Kappa Alpha Sigma and Sigma Pi were next to hit the stage and they collaborated together for their performance.

“We wanted to choose a song that was uplifting that everyone would know and would hopefully get a laugh out of the audience,” said service chair for Kappa Alpha Sigma and senior business major Kelly Mezera in an email interview. “After a bit of brainstorming we landed on breaking free and decided the only way to do it justice would be to really take on the roles of Troy and Gabriela from High School Musical and started choreography from there. We had a few practices and a few things took some time to get down but since we made the dance up all together and made it fun for everyone we all picked up the moves pretty quickly.”

Morrow Hall was up next and they performed a mashup, including “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus while they waved an American flag.

‘Resident Dragons’ was a group composed of the university’s resident directors from the dorms, and they performed a song from Hamilton, complete with fast rapping and all.

Following this was performances from Sigma Alpha and Sigma Phi Epsilon who did an artist around the world theme for their performance which included artists like Justin Bieber, Akon and Shakira.

Sigma Tau Gamma and Gamma Phi Beta did something a little different with their performance set on an airplane. Every stop was a different place and song. “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast, “Africa” by Toto, “Toxic” by Britney Spears were a few of the songs these used.

Southwest Hall then performed a medley from Spongebob Squarepants.

Up next was Tau Kappa Epsilon. This group appeared to be one of the most energetic of the night as their performance included lots of dancing and includes songs from Shakira and Toto.

“It was the around the world theme so we just looked at the songs and whatever could relate to a certain area of the world so like ‘Africa’ [by Toto], ‘Tokyo Drift’ from Japan,” secretary to Tau Kappa Epsilon and sophomore industrial technology management major Preston Nebel said. “Just some references to other parts of the world.”

At one point, a couple of the fraternity members went in the crowd and started dancing with audience members

“It wasn’t planned with anyone specifically,” Nebel said. “We just kind of thought at some point we should go into the crowd for some interaction.”

The last two performances of the night came from Wilgus Hall and WSUP. Wilgus did a medley of inspirational songs by Michael Jackson and Beyoncé, while WSUP opted to introduce the audience to metal around the world with lots of head banging ensuing.

Throughout the night, Xlusive performed a few songs in between performances to make the show a little less repetitive. Specifically, he performed a song about cheating which included sample from Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” and TLC’s “Creep.” The other was about breakfast, which he sang to a female audience member in the front.

At the end of the night homecoming court was announced and the winners for homecoming royalty were crowned. The winners this year are JJ Harm and Hannah Haack. Overall, it seemed as though the show was enjoyed by all those in attendance.