Many people are familiar with the popular song “Chapel of Love”. Yet at this week’s All-School Meeting, the PA community was exposed to a new and exciting rendition of “Chapel of Love” performed by Bobby and Babs, known formally as Dean of Community and Multicultural Development Bobby Edwards and Head of School Barbara Landis Chase. This Wednesday’s All-School Meeting consisted mostly of acts and routines performed by Phillips Academy students. The meeting started off with Student Council President Daniel Adler ’05 warming up the crowd by imitating and poking fun at previous All-School Meeting speakers. Like many All-School Meeting speakers, Adler invited students to come up and ask questions. “From what all the All-School Meeting speakers say, it seems the media plays a very important role,” Adler said in response to a question about the role of the media, a question that students have addressed frequently to recent All-School Meeting speakers. Following Adler’s introduction, the dance group HYPNOTIQ performed an exciting and evocative dance to the song “Drop.” Temi Devers ’05 choreographed the dance. “As you might have noticed, our moves corresponded with the lyrics of the song. So, every time it said ‘drop’ we would try to accent the moves down,” said Dina Burkitbayeva ’06, a member of the dance group. Other members of the group include Co-Head Tess Scott ’06, Co-Head Tanisha Colon ’06, Yendi Linares ’05, Rachel Reinauer ’07, Renee Amirault ’07, Chioma “Chi-Chi” Erondu ’06, Natasha Midgley ’05, Jennifer Meachem ’06, Jeannette Francis ’06, Sarah Hong ’05, and Gina Crivelli ’05. The dance was followed by comedy routine from the PA improvisational group “Under the Bed.” The troupe, consisting of Kendra Alleby ’05, Caroline Claflin ’05, Rosie DuPont ’06, Polly Sinclair ’07, Emma Dorsey ’06, Nate Scott ’05, Nate Greenberg ’05, and Ben Lasman ’06, then came out on stage and improvised a skit about a PA alumnus named Albert Drake who went on to become a pirate. DuPont played Drake and gave a hilarious slide show presentation (the slides were acted out by the rest of the group) depicting the history of her fictional character’s life. “Everything you saw was completely improvised on the spot. We have the outlines of every game (really skeletal stuff, like Person A is the speaker and the rest of you are the slide show) but the plot, the characters and what unfolds in the course of a performance are entirely unplanned,” Lasman said. The final act was the Yorkies, PA’s all-male a cappella group, who performed the song “Good ‘Ol A Cappella.” “We chose this song because we’ve performed it before, and it’s pretty easy to rehearse. That sounds lazy, but we chose it because we’re spending more than 15 hours per week recording our CD that’s coming out in May,” said Yorkies Co-President Miles Canaday ’05. Other members of the group include Co-President Andy St. Louis ’05, Jeff Cutts ’06, Alex King ’05, Nick Shea ’05, Ben Landy ’07, Sean Hilton ’07, Brooks Canaday ’07, Chris Li ’07, and John Tincoff ’05. On the whole, the All-School Meeting was light and lively, yet the meeting did have one serious part as well. At the beginning, before the performances, Mrs. Chase reprimanded the student body for being disrespectful and inattentive at recent All-School Meetings. She recalled that during each meeting this term, somebody’s cell-phone has gone off. “I know it is counter-cultural to what you are typically used to, but it is not so much to ask you to sit quietly, attentively, and respectfully for 30 minutes,” Mrs. Chase said. In response to Mrs. Chase’s admonishment of the student body, Emily Mortara ’06 said, “I am glad somebody finally addressed the student body about behavior at All-School Meetings. It was getting a little out of hand.” Many students noticed the absence of faculty performances in this year’s All-School Meeting talent show. Last year’s show included performances by now-retired Instructor in History and Social Sciences Jay Rogers and by Instructor in Theatre and Dance Mark Broomfield. Mrs. Chase promised to remedy this deficiency for next year’s show. “Next year faculty, you all in the back, you are all going to be up here [on the stage],” she said.
