Hi, I have some questions for Greeks of the divine nine about step.
So I'm from an asian fraternity, and we all really love stepping. Everything about it. It's such a great combination of dance / creating your own music / expression of self. I love how steppers can add all forms of entertainment to their beats, how each group can puts in their own personalities into their step with signature sequences and gimmicks, and I think it's a superb form of art.
Our organization appreciates it enough to have our own step competitions each year.
Here's the problem. I think our earliest chapters were taught by Alphas many many years ago. This is just from what I hear, so I'm not even sure. Since then, videos of performances were circulated around and step sequences copied by other chapters who have no idea what step is outside of what they see on youtube (and have no idea that they are actually copying off other greeks... which I am sure is a *big taboo*). And for many chapters, it more-or-less stayed that way. Not because they don't care, but they just don't know how seriously wrong it is to copy moves from other greeks. This reflects a bigger problem, IMHO, with asian greeks overall, which is that we tend to stick with each other and isolate from (and thus stay ignorant about) the rest of the greek world. I know some bros who don't even know what divine nine is.
On our campus, we've performed step at asian cultural shows for eight years now (I know, I know, it has nothing at all to do with asian culture. But neither do all those asian hiphop dance groups that perform there as well). When I first joined our step team after I crossed my sophomore year, we were just as ignorant about step as many other chapters. We performed many moves and sequences unaware that many of them probably originated from other NPHC Greeks. All we knew was that it was entertaining to the asian audience and that was enough. In the past year and a half, however, we've finally began to interact more with the greater cultural/minority Greek community, and this moved us to greater awareness of the mores and folkways that came with performing step. We also saw that there were many moves that we couldn't even copy from within our fraternity (I saw so shocked when I saw how similar some of our "original" moves from neighboring chapters were to parts of Phi Beta Sigma and Alpha Phi Alpha's step). Thank God we did not perform our old step back then.
Since then, I and a few of my bros have worked hard to create our first pure original step. This fall we hosted a philanthropy step event and performed in front of a non-asian audience for the first time (finally!). To our surprise, we had a very positive reception even though we probably looked like fools compared to the other D9 Greeks much better than us and who also performed. But I think we are getting better
. One of these days, hopefully, we'll be good enough to perform at NPHC hosted step shows on our campus.
So finally, my questions (sorry for this being so long). I
still don't know *exactly* what is and what isn't acceptable at step shows, what move/gimmick is and what isn't owned by different Greeks? I've tried to learn as much as I could by watching as many step shows as I could, but I still am not sure about certain things (and I think some members of divine9 fraternities here that I know are not sure themselves). So far I've stuck with the cautious side and avoided doing anything that remotely resembled something from another Greek's step. But being so cautious also imposes some unnecessary limits to what we can do with our step, and I'd rather have a greater understanding of what exactly we can really do. Also, many things still confuse me. For instance, I know that the swirly canes are KAPsi's signature move, yet I saw Phi Beta Sigma perform earlier this year with their own canes. I also saw some Greeks that were not Alphas performing the A-train.
Are there any websites that I can turn to that explains any of this? Are there any organization that regulates the Greek step scene? It is so unbelievably hard to find information about step, especially since I don't even know where to look (it's not even on wikipedia... which is supposed to have info on everything!)
Anyways thanks for reading this, sorry this was so long. If I can get a greater understanding, I think I may be able to change many chapters to be less ignorant about this and really take this seriously, and perhaps this issue can become seriously considered on a national level. Step is such a great way to bring different Greeks together and maybe it can help asian Greeks to stop being so exclusive by participating in step events. But this won't work of course if we are still ignorant about it!
