The dance used multiple actors to represent the people in the story, even having them represent different versions of the same character. It used spoken word as well as dance to tell the story of a child who is diagnosed with severe scoliosis and consequently spends their whole life facing the fallout of it. The piece opens with a row of people in lab coats surrounding a bed occupied by a single person. The “doctors” begin listing the conditions of the patient, speaking over each other until the words are unintelligible ­— a mess of medical jargon. Then the person on the bed uses their own voice to tell the audience “how fucked up I am.” This set the tone for the whole piece, and simultaneously made me sit up and pay attention.

I was diagnosed with a rare bone condition when I was seven years old. As a result of that, I have spent most of my life in and out of hospitals. I was subsequently diagnosed with several other exciting things like Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome — as fun as it sounds — and scoliosis — though not as bad as that of the subject of the dance. At this point I am well and able-bodied, but that makes me a medical anomaly and a fascination of doctors. I remember being so proud that the medical student assisting with my care wrote a paper about me when I was eight. I thought that the fact that doctors had never seen a case like mine was cool. I was unusual. Little did I know how isolating and dehumanizing that kind of “unusual” actually is.

While I understand that people felt “Patient 6183” was too long a piece for a show like Fall Forward, I personally relish the fact that something highlighting an experience I know only too well was able to be placed in it for the general public to consume. My entire viewing experience was spent sitting on the edge of my seat, engrossed in the story and seeing myself represented for the first time ever. I was brought to tears multiple times as I watched these dancers recreate the exact feelings I’ve never found a way to express. 

There is one part of the dance that will stay with me as long as I live just for the sheer heartbreak of it. The scene begins with the main character lying on the hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling. They describe the mural painted on the ceiling, most likely placed there to comfort children who are suffering. But they are not a child, so the mural is not meant for them. At the same time, unseen by them, the older version of themselves is sitting on the bed next to them, reflecting on the experience of that day and how their mother must have felt. The child begins to describe the pain they are feeling, their terror and sense of loneliness. The more they speak the more desperate they become, unable to hear their older self telling them it will be okay, desperately crying out, begging for God, someone, anyone, to be there — and then, like magic, they see their older self. They hear them say, “I am here. I am here. I am here.” The two lock in an embrace as the scene changes.

No description of this moment can accurately depict its earth-shattering grief. I felt the tears streaming down my cheeks as I watched my own young self with the same childish pride, upset about the stupid “kid” things that filled my hospital rooms, trying to be brave and grown-up as I felt the pain, terror, and loneliness threatening to take over. I found myself constantly wishing that I could go back and comfort my younger self, that she would hear me as I told her that I am here and that I will never leave her behind even as I grow and move forward.

I understand that people will have their critiques about this performance. I respect and welcome that, as there is always room to grow. That said, I will always be grateful to Liz Hawk for baring their soul with such raw honesty in “Patient 6183.” I saw myself on that stage for the first time in my life and experienced an emotional catharsis that nothing has ever given me before.

According to College secondyear and Contra Dance Club member Bizzy Seay, organizing the event after a several-year absence was both exhilarating and challenging.

“Because it hasn’t happened in so long, there are very few people that are here that have actually experienced it, so it wasn’t something that had a group of people that were super excited about it and ready to make it happen,” Seay said.

Despite this difficulty, the Dandelion Romp was planned and executed successfully, providing a weekend of fun for students,  faculty and community members who came from outside the College specifically for the event. The reestablishment of the Romp brought those familiar with contra dance and complete newcomers together. One of these newcomers was College first-year Natalie Scott, who attended both the evening dance on Saturday and the midday dance on Sunday.

“Everyone was so social and positive, it was great,” Scott said. “[I even] promised a friend I’d seek out contra dances in my hometown over the summer so I can take them.”

The weekend’s event succeeded in engaging new people with the traditional dance style and the community it brings together, both at Oberlin and around the country.

College first-year Jakaranda Jacklin, who had attended other contra dance events over the past year, was drawn to the Romp due to past events organized by the club.

“I already came in with an idea of what contra dance was like, and that expectation was fulfilled and surpassed in the best way,” Jacklin said.

These positive reviews are just a sample of the experiences people had over the weekend, and many students, faculty, and community members from near and far are sure to have more good times at future iterations of the Dandelion Romp.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Erin Koo

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You are choreographing a performance for Spring Back; tell me about your process conceptualizing this work and what we can expect.

This choreography came from thinking through all the legislation that’s happening. The audio that’s coming through the work is from the Senate floor and the news, which we are also incorporating into a drag performance. So we start with this idea of what is happening in the world, and then an actual drag performance happens on stage, which may soon be illegal for children to watch in multiple states. There will be six dancers, and there are two parts to my work. The first part of the work is listening to archival audio recordings or news clips, and then the performers will be on stage going into a drag persona while the other dancers on stage move around them. I think the core question of that work is: Can we still find empowerment for transformation?

You recently contributed to the Dance Studies Association’s Chats issue. What was this issue about?

The Chats issue actually started as an Oberlin class. When I started working at Oberlin during the pandemic, it was against COVID-19 safety guidelines for us to be next to each other. That really introduced the question, “How do you perform when you can’t even be next to each other?” It started as a class, and then continued to grow as those restrictions went away. At one point, we were hyper-aware of being in space with one another, and now that has kind of gone away. But I continued thinking about how we can think about being together. Also, what are the community-building practices that we had in social digital spaces? That’s where the Chats issue went. There are some lovely contributions from people who were thinking about moving during the pandemic and moving with people through technology. The core question is, where are bodies in digital space? And then literally, through augmented reality, we can visualize that. Chats is something that we’re trying to figure out how to bring to Oberlin in the future.

Tell me about your work on the advisory board of the Institute for Empathetic Immersive Narrative.

The Institute for Empathetic Immersive Narrative is this really cool project that’s happening at Virginia Tech, which I feel very fortunate to be invited into. They’re thinking about how we can get stories from the community told in different ways, through technology, that are truly accessible. Right now we’re in the planning stages, asking, who are we inviting? What technologies are we using? What artists are going to be able to use those technologies? How do we make sure they can use it? We are trying to honor how we can make this a community-based project in a real community.

You worked with augmented reality in your 2023 work, places i can’t dance. How did you connect movement and technology to create this work? 

For places i can’t dance, I started with a motion capture of me dancing in my driveway. There were three cameras around me, capturing all the movement. Then I fed the footage through a software to pick up on the movements, designed my avatar, and now I am able to place myself somewhere. For this project, I put myself in places I can’t dance. So there’s digital nowhere, Encinitas, California, where there was a dancing ban. There are still places, like New York City, where dancing in public is still restricted. My mainstage show last year was based on the 1904 World’s Fair and the human zoo, because the largest exhibit featured people from the Philippines. There were so many — what they called natives — that were on display. So by placing my avatar here, I am asking, what does it mean for me to dance at the 1904 World’s Fair? A really fun thing about this project is that you can place me in your own space.

I’m interested in this hyperawareness that we had of spaces in 2020 and the conversation about who’s taking up space and who’s allowed to take up space. I think about it a lot in terms of invisibility. Who’s taking up space but doesn’t know it, or who is actually in the space with us that we don’t see?

That’s a big theme through all of this. In the 1904 World’s Fair, there was a 12-year-old named Antero Cabrera, who was known for singing “America (My Country, ’Tis of Thee).” He toured the United States, including the White House, after the World’s Fair. I think of the spaces that he was in that hold the echoes of his performance, spaces that we have forgotten. I guess it’s a project of remembrance. Multidisciplinary artist and Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista recently contributed to the Dance Studies Association’s Chats issue.

Yet despite the large number of groups, there are far more students wanting to get involved in dance on campus than already participating in dance classes or clubs.

By virtue of being a conservatory school, Oberlin tends to position music in higher demand than the other performance arts. The extensive access to music performances, classes, and practice rooms makes dance and other performance art seem insignificant in comparison. There aren’t many dance studios, and we aren’t a school recognized for dance. Although Oberlin does have a Dance department and many student organizations and clubs, some students feel unable to explore their identities as dancers.

In terms of academic dance spaces and class structure, there seems to be exclusivity among Dance majors. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Students who spend the majority of their time together in classes are bound to have closer connections, and cliques are created regardless of the intentions of these artistic spaces. There is also an academic culture surrounding dance. A non-dance major looking to participate in dance may be discouraged by the idea that if they’re not pursuing dance academically, they can’t be that serious about it. 

“The fact that I’m not a Dance major or minor, but am still a dancer, is baffling to some people,” Sophia Steckler, a College third-year trained in classical Indian dance, said. “If you’re not a Dance major or minor, you’re not a dancer to them.”

Some dance classes and organizations do not require prior experience, yet students with limited dance experience sometimes feel left behind or lost. 

“I think at times, there is kind of an expectation or divide in most of the dance classes,” Steckler said. “Even though it’s open to everyone, you still need some basic understanding of dance technique depending on the style: jazz, improvisation, whatever.”

This perceived lack of opportunities doesn’t come from an actual absence of resources in the form of clubs, classes, or organizations. It comes from a perceived monopoly over claiming the dancer identity. The opportunities to get involved in dance on campus do not negate the work one must do to break into these groups — especially when, before arriving at Oberlin, one has already dedicated a significant amount of time to a craft and built a community elsewhere. 

“I’m a classical Indian dancer … [and] at home I would do it multiple times a week,” Steckler said. “I live near my dance studio and my dance teachers, so I felt very connected to them through being in the physical space together. Here, I still take dance classes, but it’s still very different. I consider myself a dancer, but I don’t go to a dance class for the majority of the year, so do I call myself a dancer? I’m not even dancing, I’m not even practicing my technique even once a week.” 

As a beginner dancer, the desire to join a dance space is fueled by the eagerness to learn dance, whatever style it may be. However, when one is an established dancer, the appeal becomes less about learning and more about building community. Oberlin and other academic institutions should consciously create spaces where the people dancing are valued as much as dance itself, and where talents are respected outside of academic settings. 

At its core, Somewhere Good is about double meanings: the queerness of gestures, the presence of absence, and the reality of loss — of family members that have passed, of histories that have been forgotten, and of voices that have been silenced. 

The project will take place as a set of three exhibitions. The first is a display of art composed of ArtiFACTs made by Oberlin students and Kendal residents. 

“The exhibits are an experiment in the many places we call home, how we remember them, and how we move in them,” Evangelista wrote in his director’s note, which ties into the second exhibit. 

As the display moves from the lobby into the theater, one can see dozens of boxes labeled Balikbayan Cargo.

“These boxes, balikbayan boxes, are care packages typically sent by Filipino/a/x families in the United States to families still in the Philippines,” Evangelista wrote. “It continues a long tradition of sending remittances back to the Philippines.” 

In this way, the stage invokes emotions associated with being away from home and family. The boxes signify the complexity of transpacific relationships, geographical separation, and familial love, thereby centering Filipinx and Filipinx-American history and culture. 

“The last exhibit tonight is a historical one,” Evangelista wrote. “An exhibit that is invisible but heard and deeply felt. In 1904, the St. Louis World [Fair’s] main attraction was the ‘human exhibits.’ The largest ‘human zoo’ displays at St. Louis were the 70,000 Philippine exhibits hosting more than 1,200 ‘natives.’” 

Evangelista emphasized that while the performance draws attention to forgotten and overshadowed histories like the 1904 “human zoos,” it also acknowledges people, voices, and stories that cannot be recovered. 

“The movement tonight communicates the words lost, the words in bodies, and especially the words in motion,” he wrote. “This is not to say this is a project of recovery [or] absolution. Instead, this dance invites the integration of loss, tradition, and community.” 

In preparation for the show, Evangelista asked ODC students to reflect on what this performance meant to them. College second-year and Dance major Aimee Watts described her experience as a dancer in the piece.

“I think this performance is about what it means to explore the ambiguity within the past and present of Filipino history and what it means to create a space for this history through all its loss and fragmentation,” Watts said. “When reaching toward an unknown past, it’s important to acknowledge that we do not know all these histories and lie witness to its loss and disjointedness.”

The disjointedness of loss can be seen when dancers interact with buttons atop the balikbayan boxes in the center of the stage. Pressing different buttons in different ways prompts the audio to start, change, stutter, and stop, which in turn, causes dancers to start, change, stutter, and stop as well. Watts remarked on what it feels like to be a part of this fragmentation.

“[We are] having to enact history as we have to physically press the button on stage,” she said. “As performers, in order to create these new relations between the unknown, known, past, and current, we use this ambiguity within space, time, history, and memory as an invitation.”

Loss, ambiguity, and fragmentation can, of course, be frustrating, and Somewhere Good highlights this frustration. College third-year and Dance and Creative Writing major Emmacate Sauer, another dancer in the show, noted how the technology involved in the performance makes it both challenging and unique.

“I feel like what excites me about it is I’ve done pieces with clear-ish narratives before, but I think I’ve never been a part of something that’s been as heavily researched,” Sauer said. “Also, the technology! That’s crazy and I’m still struggling with it.”

Sauer also linked the effect of the performance to the meaning behind it. 

“Having the process and the dissemination of information near the goals of the work is something I’ve never thought about before,” Sauer said. “I did find it frustrating at times, but it’s kind of crazy and meta to think about. You don’t know this piece of information, because the idea is that you’re searching for the histories that have been obscured. As a dancer, you’re supposed to be kind of frustrated, and that’s a part of it.”

Somewhere Good has invited its participants to engage with Filipinx history and the difficulties of loss in diverse, creative, and beautiful ways. Evangelista, his creative team, and ODC extend this invitation to their audience.

“One of the big hopes for the event is to find a lot of people who either haven’t heard of contra dancing before or people who have and haven’t [been able] to do it in a couple years,” said double-degree fourth-year and Contra Dance Club co-leader Sam Brinkley. “Contra dancing clubs and communities around the country like to have a beginner’s lesson right beforehand. … I think contra dance is a whole lot about accessibility and making sure that lots and lots of people can feel accepted and involved. That’s one of the beauties of it — it’s not something that you have to take a class in.”

Contra dance has been a pivotal part of Brinkley’s Oberlin experience. Prior to coming to college, he practiced contra dance at summer chamber festivals in New Hampshire, where he met Molly Tucker, OC ’20. Tucker served as the club’s leader at the time and was key in persuading Brinkley to attend Oberlin. When Tucker graduated, Brinkley and his current co-leader, College fourth-year Eliza Goodell, stepped up to the plate. Though the future seemed unclear at first, the Contra Dance Club found traction fairly quickly. 

“Sam got in touch with me and was like, ‘Let’s, see if we can make this happen,’” said Goodell. “One of the things that I think I was worried about before was that we had kind of lost our network of people who were helping out with the dances. … A lot of them had graduated, and I didn’t know anyone younger who was interested. Right around the time when we reactivated the org and were starting to think about making it happen, there were several people that reached out and were like, ‘Do you know anything about this?’ It was all in the same week. It was really funny.” 

Many of the club’s current members are first- and second-years. College first-years Bizzy Seay and Rosalie Coleman helped organize both the dance and the open band. For Seay, who plays the fiddle and has participated in contra dances since she was two years old, her first year of college came at a good time. Now that the Contra Dance Club is stepping back into full swing, she has been able to transplant her contra dance experience onto the floors of Oberlin’s campus. But it’s not her seasoned knowledge that draws her into contra dance; it’s the discipline’s immersive and freeform nature. 

“It feels like a really open community to me,” Seay said. “It’s so easy to jump into it without really knowing what’s happening. At a lot of contra dances, they’ll do English country dancing, which you see in, like, Jane Austin movies. That’s much more subdued and proper — contra dancing is … much more fast-paced and energetic, and people really have fun with it.”

This year’s show saw performances from a wide range of students and student organizations including OSLAM, African Students Association, And What!?, South Asian Students Association, and Oberlin College Taiko. 

The energy in the chapel was palpable as Conservatory third-year Rachel Yee took the stage for the first act to cheers and applause, which grew louder with each performance. Throughout the night, students sitting shoulder to shoulder in the crowded pews relished in the sheer magnitude of talent on display.

The event has served as a sanctum for Oberlin students of color for the last quarter of a century, but what made this year’s show stand out was its role in reintroducing many younger Obies to the massive expanse of multicultural artforms on campus after two years of relative silence due to the COVID-19 shutdown. 

College fourth-year Ryo Adachi was introduced to Colors of Rhythm as a first-year in 2019, the last year it was produced before the pandemic. 

“I remember participating in the 2019 one,” she said. “It really was a nice platform for students to share and celebrate the different kinds of cultures and creativity on campus.”

Adachi described the buzz about the event she heard as a first-year, which made her want to get involved. 

“[I heard] a lot of upperclassmen talking about the event, even from Orientation actually, and they were really excited,” she said. “I think that was definitely a shift on campus over the past two years where it didn’t happen and not many people now know about it, so hopefully we can bring back the tradition so that people know about it and celebrate it.”

Adachi’s eagerness to bring Colors of Rhythm back to the student body was a sentiment shared by College second-year Arohi Dandawate, who danced on Thursday both with the Bollywood/Bhangra ExCo and in a duet with College third-year Aiesha Parmar. 

“As we start to bring back these performances, I get that feeling of, ‘This is why I’m doing this,’” Dandawate said. “Practicing alone is really meditative and awesome, but doing things as a group, doing things for other people to enjoy and to learn, is just such an uplifting feeling.” 

She and Parmar danced together to a popular song from the Bollywood movie Devdas, which Parmar explained was a very important experience for them. 

“It’s a song that has a place in the hearts of a lot of Bollywood dancers,” Parmar said. “I remember being obsessed with the song when I was like four years old and wanting to dance like them, and now I’m actually doing it.”

In spite of the long hiatus, the significance of Colors of Rhythm to Oberlin students of color has certainly not been lost.

“The default in Oberlin tends to be white,” Parmar said. “You have to go out of your way to find cultural diversity classes to learn from perspectives outside of that, so it’s nice to have this event that centers and celebrates the global majority.” 

Conservatory fourth-year Gabriel Morales, who also performed at the showcase, shares a similar view. 

“In my case, as a child of Venezuelan parents, I don’t often have a space to include influences from my family’s culture in the styles of music I normally perform in an overt way,” Morales wrote in an email to the Review.

Morales performed with College third-year Bianca Berger as they played “Gade Papi” by Emeline Michel, a Hatian vocalist and songwriter, and recited an original poem by Berger titled “To Dream.”

For Morales, the song signifies a call to follow your passions and ignore anyone’s threats to your inner fire. That message seems particularly relevant to students like double-degree fifth-year Morgan Chan, who performed with OC Taiko at the event.

“As someone who’s in the Conservatory, I do sometimes feel a little bit closeted about also playing Taiko,” Chan said. “It tends to be viewed as a hobby, … which made me feel discouraged about being more open about what I cared about and who I was.” 

OC Taiko performed two pieces at the event, an arrangement of a specific stance and form taught by Oedo Sukeroku Daiko called “Many-Sided” and a piece first written by Hiroshi  Tanaka called “Tatsumaki.” The crowd erupted as soon as the performers took their places, staring in awe as they masterfully flew across the stage in perfect time.

In the week leading up to Colors of Rhythm, Chan looked forward to the opportunity to perform in a space that placed much more value on artforms like Taiko. 

“I think it’ll be nice to play for an audience that is more open and accepting,” they said. “[And] it’s not just about accepting people of color, it’s also about celebrating them.”

The goal of the event is, of course, to provide a space for performers of color, but the main hope of the students and the MRC is that it will be just one of many spaces that open up as students’ talents and voices are seen and heard on a larger scale.

“It goes without saying that BIPOC art and stories are so important and it’s great that we are able to share that in such a big way through Colors of Rhythm,” Berger wrote in an email to the Review. “Support doesn’t stop at coming to see the show, however. It looks like going to and supporting BIPOC events that orgs put on themselves. It looks like supporting and being an ally in classes and in public spaces like the ’Sco. Allyship comes in many forms and people across the board should really sit with and reflect on how they can be in physical space with those they want to support without centering themselves.”

A labor of love that has taken months of preparation, the show is being put on with the help of a grant from XARTS, an Oberlin fund created to support the development and execution of collaborative, multi-disciplinary artistic projects. When asked about their preparative creative processes, LaRiviere and Cameron discussed the vital transformation of their choreographic skills.

“This is very different from other shows because it’s not as much sitting back as it can be with other departments’ shows with a lot of shorter dances all by different people,” Cameron said. “This is almost an hour of my own choreography, which is like nothing I’ve ever done before. So it was a little bit daunting. But it was a wonderful experience. I feel like I learned a lot.”

Both Cameron and LaRiviere used experimental ideas to help form their final outcome. While LaRiviere prefers to showcase her work in non-trditional spaces, she highlighted the sentimental aspect of showcasing her capstone project in Warner Main Space.

“I’ve always been interested in site-specific dance, which is dance that happens outside of a regular stage theater,” LaRiviere said. “But in my heart of hearts, I knew that I needed to dance my senior show in Main Space, which is just such a gorgeous, beautiful space that holds such a place in my heart.”

LaRiviere chose to create an installation for her performance. A series of decorated cloth-like pieces will be draped around the stage for the duration of her performance, transforming the traditional stage in Warner into an otherworldly space. 

“I was craving a new and interesting space to create and move in,” LaRiviere said. “The installation mainly consists of large sheets of cheesecloth that are 40-50 feet long. It also includes two films that I made over Winter Term. One was an installation in a hallway in the basement of Warner called ‘Stuck.’ The other is called ‘Masked Play.’ I made the installation using chairs and partner dance work. It’s very much an interdisciplinary show of movement, art, film, and projection.”

Cameron’s performance will combine her two passions: dance and psychology. In the last few months, she conducted a department-wide survey, the results of which inform the structure and narrative of her piece. 

“First, I conducted a campus-wide dance survey of the entire Oberlin dance community,” Cameron said. “I collected about 60 responses, which I think was the final number. And there were eight open-ended questions all pertaining to dance. From those written words that people sent me, I created the almost 40-minute-long show that we’re putting on this weekend.”

Although Cameron and LaRiviere will be showcasing their pieces for the same event, the performances differ greatly from each other. 

“The shows are completely opposite aesthetically,” La Riviere said. “Jewel’s is 100 percent on a different page than my show. But I think it’ll be really fun for the audience to be able to see two such different but engaging pieces.” 

In reflecting on the ethos of the Dance department, LaRiviere noted that the faculty prioritizes student choreography.

“The department really pushes student creation,” LaRiviere said. “I feel like every year that I get older, I get more and more courage and knowledge and experience to create my own work. It feels very supported by the department.” 

Associate Professor of Dance Alysia Ramos described the Dance department as a non-prescriptive, open environment where students are encouraged to design their own paths. 

“I was really interested in teaching dance in a liberal arts environment, rather than a conservatory,” Ramos said. “I am really interested in students who do interdisciplinary work or who have other interests outside of dance, too.”

Ramos’ statement highlights the life-blood of Oberlin’s Dance department, as it primarily serves students who do not commit to a major. In fact, there are currently only a handful of Dance majors in the department. However, many students who dabble in the Dance department regard their experience as one of the most memorable throughout their college career.

“There’s a lot of people who end up accidentally minoring in the Dance department because it’s really easy to pick up a dance minor,” LaRiviere said. “One of my friends had taken samba, hip hop, ballet, and contemporary twice and ended up with a minor just because she kind of fell backwards into the Dance department and had never really taken a dance class before coming here.”

For LaRiviere and Cameron, majoring in Dance was always the plan, though both are multi-disciplinary students. LaRiviere shares her major with Biochemistry and Cameron with Psychology, a shining example of the Dance department’s interdisciplinary principles. 

Au Milieu and Dance Stories are set to begin at 8 p.m this Friday and Saturday. They are sure to be a beautiful and original showcasing of the hard work and passion that runs throughout Oberlin’s Dance department. 

Brown wanted the ’Sco’s first show back to be memorable, so they introduced the idea of a festival, saying they were inspired to reach out to all artists on their own.

“I do have co-workers at the ’Sco,” Brown said. “But this was kind of just my festival, my project.” 

Brown is from Chicago, and they decided they wanted part of the event’s lineup to hail from their hometown.

“I knew two of the artists already, and I really like their music,” Brown said. “The other two [from Chicago] I didn’t know personally, but I’ve liked their music for a long time. I would definitely say they are some of my favorite artists at the moment.”

SID, the lead rapper of the Chicago-based hip-hop jazz band SiDAKA, reflected on how rare it felt to participate in a lineup like the one at Angel Ultra Fest, especially with COVID-19 back on the rise.

“It felt amazing to be surrounded by that many artists, me being who I am and [them] who they are,” SID said. “And to see the world right now — it kind of made me look around and appreciate this moment that was going on. To see a lot of smiling faces, people dancing, I felt so grateful to be there. Courtney did an amazing job.” 

Memphis rapper Staysie Atoms, who played an hour-long set for the first time in her career, greatly enjoyed the Oberlin campus atmosphere. 

“The environment and the vibe were unreal,” she said. “Oberlin is like the 2000s college campus of my dreams.”

Unfortunately, the performers’ did experience one caveat to achieving the full-force Oberlin experience — Oberlin’s freshly reinstated indoor mask mandate exerted some limitations. 

Though both artists enjoyed themselves, they did feel constrained by their masks, which were required following the College’s reinstatement of the indoor mask mandate. 

“The mask does take away from the visual representation of who we are and how I’m performing certain songs,” SID said. “That’s part of our music, you know? It’s harder to connect with people. Our bassist Jackson, he makes these jazz stank faces, and we want the audience to see those super crucial facial expressions.”

Atoms also found that her mask stunted her ability to connect with the audience; it shortchanged the physicality of her performance. 

“It’s just hard to keep that stamina, because I want to show my face and look people in the eyes and get them to really flow with me,” she said. “It was hard to keep my breath, so I just felt a little distracted.”

Unfortunately, Brown says the mask mandate affected turnout as well.

“[Masking] was definitely a big boundary,” they said. “I feel like a lot of students didn’t come. I think that it was a barrier.” 

College third-year Joaquim Stevenson-Rodriguez both helped organize the festival and also performed with Oberlin alumnum DJ Macro at one of the afterparties. He said that it’s hard to determine how masking impacted turnout as this was the ’Sco’s first concert since last spring; there isn’t really a norm to compare it to.

“I still thought there was great turnout, but I was a little surprised at how few people came to the actual shows,” he said. “The afterparties were much bigger but definitely a different crowd. I think masks were a part of that.” 

Unfortunate as the mask mandate’s timing may have been, both Brown and Stevenson-Rodriguez were very pleased with Angel Ultra Fest’s energetic atmosphere and genre-bending lineup. 

“People seemed to have a really great time,” Brown said. “I had people come up to me the day after and say they really enjoyed it. Everything went according to plan, and all the performances were really good. I know a lot of the artists prepared new songs specifically for this show, and all of them were so interactive with the audience.” 

For Stevenson-Rodriguez, the thrill of the event was in the music and technical skill exhibited by many of the performers. 

“Honestly, it was so good,” Stevenson-Rodriguez said. “It was just one amazing set after another. Each one was so different, but they all worked very well together. It was electrical out of the trunk stuff and then hip-hop and then some funky stuff. My mind was totally blown by all the mixing, their transitions — just insane stuff.” 

Similarly to Stevenson-Rodriguez, SID left the festival with a deep respect for his fellow headliners and an appreciation for the work put into the lineup’s realization. 

“I don’t know how many times I can say it, but that was such a good group of artists,” SID said. “I mean, the diversity of DJs along with the singers and our band. I don’t know; it ain’t easy. It ain’t easy bringing this lineup together. It was just really cool; Courtney was amazing.”