One aspect of the Ozone program that we want to re-emphasize
is the arts component. Our passion and pursuit of the arts comes in various
forms, some more obvious than others. One of the more obvious forms came last
Tuesday, as students showed their passion for the arts as well.
Great Pretenders is our longest running annual event.
Combining dance choreography and storytelling, GP is an all-city lip-syncing
competition. Students put together acts that go along with popular songs,
mouthing the lyrics and conveying a story on stage.
While everyone gets a chance to perform at individual clubs,
only one final, winning act from each city age group was allowed to advance to
our finals last Tuesday, where even the crowd was in character.
For the pre-show, we redecorated our offices as a Hollywood
awards party. There was a red carpet and hanging vinyl records and movie
posters that defied all attempts to hang them on the wall. As students stepped
off the buses, we shouted and danced and took pictures and asked interview
questions. Inside and after the rocking pizza line, we helped students dress up
with donated neckties, homemade headbands and so many bottles of hair gel.
As for the show proper, it was our best yet. This year’s
winning act was the entire Springdale high school club – the largest act we’ve
ever had – performing a melody of nostalgic songs with a
Grease-esque overtone. The downside to winning was splitting the
100-dollar prize seventeen ways.
Other winners included Gia Parmer of the Fayetteville Primetime
Club, who won Best Choreography for Hey
There Delilah, and a collection of primetime students from Springdale who
won best costume for One Thing.
By the close of the night, our fifty-plus volunteers gave
out over two hundred shirts and we had kids eating whole boxes of pizza to help
us clean up. Parents and passers-by were able to watch the spectacle and hear
about the work Ozone does. We had thrown countless prizes into the audience,
enjoyed the fresh creativity displayed by our students (both onstage and in the
crowd), and remembered the true reason Ozone exists: to celebrate the
fellowship and community purpose we have in Jesus Christ.
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