Variety Show celebrates UW-Platteville’s 150th birthday

On Oct. 13, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville celebrated its homecoming celebration with the annual variety show hosted by Campus Programming and Relations. This year’s theme was lip sync, which had residence halls, school organizations and Greek life competing to win.

To kick off the show the Pioneer Dance Team performed to Britney Spears’s “Ooh La La.”

CPR members senior business administration major Kassidy Kohout and senior media studies major Justin Toney were the official first lip sync act of the night. Together they portrayed Jimmy Fallon and Ariana Grande’s lip sync conversation as seen on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

The first performance by a residence hall was from McGregor Hall and Cooper Living and Learning Center. The group lip synced and danced to the theme song from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Will Smith’s “Getting Jiggy With it”, Spice Girl’s “Wannabe”, “Jump Around”, “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 and “Space Jam” by Quad City DJ’s to name a few.

Up next was Bridgeway Commons wearing matching black shirts. They started their lip sync mash-up with the Space Jam theme song, the Little Einsteins theme song, “Rocket Man” by Elton John and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” The group ended their act by dancing and lip syncing to Jason Derulo’s “The Other Side” which prompted a member to do the worm.

“When he fell to the stage and began doing the worm, I couldn’t help but cheer,” senior psychology major Katelin Van Lanen said.

Sigma Phi Epsilon had two members act as announcers and tell the crowd the different types of music throughout the years. They first lip synced to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” then The Knack’s “My Sharona.” Afterwards they did jumping jacks to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and lip synced passionately to Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” and ended with the Black Eyed Peas “I Got a Feeling.”

Gamma Phi Beta started their performance with retro songs like Elvis’ “Hound Dog” and Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and then switched to more contemporary songs like Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” and Jason Derulo’s “Wiggle.”

“I loved their [Gamma Phi Beta] song choices,” senior biology major Halley Paninsheck said. “I sang along with them.”

Wilgus and Melcher Hall had Danny the Dinosaur on stage with them as they lip synced to “I’m A Palentologist” by They Might Be Giants, Camp Rock’s “Can’t Back Down” and High School Musical’s “We’re All in This Together.”

WSUP was next to take the stage and showed how the station has evolved.

“It was fun to be able to tell the story of the evolution of our station throughout the years,” sophomore general engineering major Emma Dums said.

For each song, one member of the station would come out and lip sync. Songs ranged from The Beatle’s “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law”, “All the Small Things” by Blink- 182 and “I’m Not Okay” by My Chemical Romance. The members ended their set by all lip syncing Panic! At the Disco’s “This is Gospel.”

“Some [acts] kind of went the pop route, we went the rock route,” fifth- year senior media studies major and WSUP member Betsy Heidt said.

Dobson was second to last and wore shirts that read “Straight Outta Dobson.” They lip synced to the Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way” and performed a dance routine that made the ladies go crazy.

The last act of the night was performed by Hugunin Hall.

“Our concept was having The Doctor from Doctor Who go back from different time periods and pull important characters from those decades. Like from the 70s we had The Doctor pull Darth Vader, from 1893 we pulled Mowgli which was the guy in the towel which most people didn’t get, 2016 we had Ed Sheeran which I don’t think looked like Ed Sheeran, just a guy in a flannel shirt,” senior mechanical engineering major Andrew Groleau said.

They lip synced to AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”

“I would have changed that we actually practiced more, had someone lip sync instead of people just standing in the background and dancing,” Groleau said.

The judges counted up their scores for each of the performances and the winners were: WSUP winning the category of Other, Sigma Phi Epsilon winning for the Greek Life category and Bridgeway Commons winning for the Residence Halls category. However, to the crowd and the performers, the variety show was more of an experience than a competition.

“The variety show is really fun to go to see how different groups that did multiple songs for their lip sync interpreted how music has changed since the early 1900s into today’s music,” Heidt said.