This Saturday night, two Winter Carnival formals will enable students to add some romance to their lives, just in time for Valentine's Day.
The College revived the traditional event after a one-year hiatus in 1993.
One of the dances, sponsored by the Programming Board, will be held in the Collis Center.
The Programming Board formal will cater to this year's "The Call of the Wild" theme, said Michelle Webb '95, formal co-chair.
"We've hired a decorator and we'll have decorative animals to go with the theme. Giant stuffed animals. Not the kind someone went out and shot and took to a taxidermist," she said.
The Marcels, a band from Boston, will perform in Collis common ground. "The Programming Board listened to tapes of different band. When this one came on, they couldn't stay in their seats," Programming Coordinator Linda Kennedy said.
"They play everything from Jazz to modern pieces," Webb said.
According to Kennedy, "you won't be in a room with a band just dancing. We're trying to have a lot of things going on."
"There will be two string quartets that in the lounge, which is also where the hors d'oeuvres will be. In the cafe dining room there will be karaoke, and there will be music in the Lone Pine Tavern," she said.
Over 600 people attended last year's Winter Carnival formal, Kennedy said.
Admission to the Programming Board formal is free for all Dartmouth undergraduates.
The other formal, sponsored by Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and the Afro- American Society, will be held in Alumni Hall of the Hopkins Center for Performing Arts. The theme of the Alumni Hall event is "Far Away Dreams in Crimson and Cream."
According to Candace Howell '95, vice-president of Delta Sigma, crimson and cream are the colors of both sponsoring Greek organizations.
Howell said "there will be a DJ with a nice mix of music. Something that people can dance to in nice clothing."
In addition to the dance, Howell said "Kappa Alpha Psi will be having a step show."
"A step show is almost indescribable. It is a dance that creates its own music. It is sometimes chants and sometimes just rhythms made with people's body parts," John Lee '95, president of Kappa Alpha Psi, said.
"It is a routine that historically black fraternities occasionally do. It is a social event derived from historical black styles," he said."One reason people attended last year was because they enjoy seeing a step show," Howell said. "We are inviting Greek organizations from surrounding communities, so it might be sold out."
Tickets can be obtained for $3 per person or $5 per couple in the Thayer Hall lobby or at the Hopkins Center.
This will be the ninth Winter Carnival formal sponsored by Delta Sigma and Kappa Alpha Psi. "Before that other Greek organizations held formals for Carnival," Howell said.
According to some alumni, the Carnival formal, or at least some type of weekend dance, has long been a tradition of the Winter Carnival.
Every Carnival weekend would bring a mass migration of women to Hanover as buses and trains came to the College from area colleges.
Before Dartmouth's coeducation, guests "would come up on the train and we'd all go and freeze to death at the old station to watch the girls," Price said.
Dick Gruen '34 explained the annual influx of females, saying "they'd come up from Smith and Wellesley. There were dances in various houses. We all had our fraternities," he said.
The tide of women grew somewhat problematic in the early 1920s when guests' presence distracted the men of Dartmouth in the classroom.
Boyce Price '36 said "as I recall all of our Carnival entertaining was in our fraternity houses."
But there haven't always been formals scheduled for Winter Carnival, Fred Berthold '45 said. In the early 40s the formal was canceled because "it was war time. Pearl Harbor was Dec. 7 of my freshman year," Berthold said.
"The word went out that prom guests were "personae non gratae" in the classrooms," The Dartmouth of Jan. 24, 1921 reads.
An editorial in the same issue insinuated the administration banned female guests from attending classes because their presence gave them "the idea that this College exists for something besides extra-curriculum activities."
In addition to the fraternity dances typical of the era, the College hosted a common formal in the 1920s. The Dartmouth of February 11, 1921 announced five-hundred couples would "participate in the 'super-dance.'" Matters of decoration were left to the "corps of artisans who wrought wonders to the bare gymnasium floor."
A similar aesthetic success occurred for the Feb. 14, 1914 Carnival formal, when "a thousand green branches turned about girders and posts effectively produced an impression of a miniature New Hampshire forest."
The main focus of Carnival has always been the outdoors, Gruen said.
But, as explained in "To the Carnival Girl," a 1921 editorial from The Dartmouth, Carnival isn't only about the outdoors: "there is a certain charm of Carnival that tugs gently at your heart strings and thrills you with an exhilaration never before experienced. It is a renaissance. In the weeks and months to come you will not calculate time in your erstwhile prosaic fashion; rather, you will say, it was before or after my Carnival."
This year's formals will both begin at 9 p.m. Dress for both events is semi-formal.
