By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Quite a commotion was created during the last social event at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics as about half the students in attendance lined up on the dance floor to performed a highly risqué dance; the other half of the students obstained from the number, some even scoffed at the dance’s vulgar nature.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Limestone’s Memorial Gym was decorated to match the sophistication and elegance of the annual Gatsby Ball, attended by students of the Maine School of Science and Mathmatics. The teens shed their own personalities and became, instead, individuals from the 1920s and took on the characteristics of someone who’d attended ritzy gatherings like those described in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic “The Great Gatsby.” Additional photos under Art & Entertainment.
The “highly controversial” number isn’t performed at most high school dances today, but not because of it’s wild reputation — the dance was the Charleston, the event was the fourth annual Gatsby Ball and whether or not students participated in the dance depended solely on how the 1920 character they played would have reacted to such a dance.
Student Maddy Blaisdell played a daughter of a Hungarian old-money family, and her character attended the ball to experience American culture, which is why her character loved the Charleston. Her classmate, Eric Edgecomb, explained why.
“The Charleston was more of a dance that new money would have done because they wanted to have fun and be wild,” he said.
How does Edgecomb know this?
Because any student who wanted to attend the Gatsby Ball — inspired from none other than the great American novel “The Great Gatsby” — first had to pour themselves into research on the 1920s to create a realistic persona that reflected the characteristics of an individual who would have attended this type of social event as described in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic.
Jessica Baker, American literature teacher at MSSM, started the popular event four years ago with about 15 students participating in the highly educational experience that happens to be a whole lot of fun.
“American literature students are given a quote from ‘The Great Gatsby’ before they read the novel; they then create a character based on what they can infer from that quote regarding class, social standing and mannerisms,” Baker explained. “They create their character based on their quote from that novel and over the course of the evening, they’re expected to ballroom dance, mingle socially and figure out who Gatsby is.”
The quotes, however, are not self-explanatory and students need to heavily research the 1920s in order to provide context for the quote; the average student spent two weeks researching the era in order to formulate who their character was and how their character would have acted at an event like the Gatsby Ball.
On Feb. 5, the 25 American literature students at the school joined 69 other MSSM students (who created their own believable 1920s personas independently) to attend the Gatsby Ball and project the knowledge base their characters derived from.
Like the Charleston-loving character Naomi Kovasch that Blaisedell played. Attending the ball as a defiant young single gal eager to experience American culture, she had to be particularly aware of the subtle flirtations of the 1920s.
“When the other characters ‘hit on’ my character at the ball, they were asking if I was more interested in cash or checks, because ‘cash’ meant let’s make out now and ‘checks’ meant ‘let’s make out later’; a response of ‘bank’s open’ meant you were for it while ‘bank’s closed’ meant ‘no way, back off,’” Blaisedell explained. All suggested interactions were, of course, strictly hypothetical as the characters played by the students by no means reflected their real life personalities.
But as a study of 1920s culture, Blaisedell also found the concept of cutting-in on a dance to be particularly interesting.
“If a girl is cut in on more frequently than others, it means that she’s really desirable,” she said. Her character was cut in on a couple of times, but her old-money Hungarian parents (played by Darius Haskell and Arianna Nitzel) had forbid her to attend the ball, so through the evening Haskell and Nitzel would chase Blaisedell around, interrupting her dances and scolding her dancing partners — they were that committed to their 1920s characters.
As Blaisedell’s parents, Haskell and Nitzel described how their research indicated that their characters wouldn’t have wanted to attend the Ball “because we’re old money and we’re not supposed to associate with the nouveau riche,” Haskell said.
When it came to the dance floor, Baker helped her students learn how their characters would have behaved at the ball; they were not only taught how to properly cut in on a dance 1920s style, but they learned the waltz, a bit of swing dancing and, of course, the Charleston. The result was all 94 students in attendance dance the night away — about a foot away from their partners — to 1920s music and learned by experience just how much fun the seemingly lost art of traditional dance can be. Student Alden Porter commented on how the dances of the 1920s were a lot more organized,
“And they were more conducive to conversation, as oppose to the jumping around people do today,” Blaisedell added.
“That’s because dancing was more of a means to find someone that you wanted to marry rather than just having fun,” said Nitzel.
True to the era, dancing in such a manor gave the students an opportunity to mingle with the other characters and learn about the different elements which would bring an individual to such an occasion, which resulted in a very educational experience in an astonishingly entertaining setting.
The end result of such an elaborate event is that for one evening, students lived in the past and understood life in the 1920s; a fair number of students have even started planning their characters for the next Gatsby Ball already.
“Part of the excitement surrounding the Gatsby Ball is the learning community we’ve created here; it’s a lot easier for the students to play a crazy character when everyone else is playing a crazy character too,” Baker said. “The biggest surprise is that the students push each other each year to create better characters.”
Now that they’ve been immersed in 1920s culture, American literature students are excited to read the “The Great Gatsby” — whether it’s to find out how true their characters were to their quote or just to learn more about the 1920s.
“By the time the students finally get to read ‘The Great Gatsby’ it’s like welcoming back an old friend,” Baker said.
