The Raising Cane’s River Center echoed with the sounds of music and killer dance moves on Sunday, April 7.   

Songfest originally began as a men’s singing competition that evolved into a choreographed dance competition among University sororities and fraternities. The event pairs chapters randomly into groups that compete against each other. Today, the event serves as the main fundraiser for the Greek Board of Directors (GBOD). GBOD is a group of student leaders that come together to support Greek Life.  

“This is our biggest fundraising event because Greek Board of Directors is a nonprofit,” LSU human resource management junior and Songfest director Jena Partimbene said. “We mostly fund Habitat for Humanity, which is Greek Week, and the money goes to that. And we’ve built twenty-eight houses in the past fourteen years. We just finished two two weeks ago.”  

This year’s Songfest kicked off promptly at 3 p.m. with each team having a theme and matching costumes. Alpha Phi and Phi Kappa Psi performed “Not All Heroes Wear Capes” while Alpha Delta Pi and Sigma Nu had “Working Day And Night.” Delta Delta Delta, Sigma Alpha and Sigma Phi Epsilon delivered “Early 2000s TV” along with a nostalgic “High School Musical” throwback.  

Delta Gamma and Tau Kappa Epsilon presented “Broadway’s Hit Shows” with some spectacular showbiz moves whereas Kappa Alpha Theta, Alpha Gamma Rho and ACACIA performed “Life’s A Beach,” which included a hilarious “Baby Shark” insert. Chi Omega and Alpha Tao Omega performed “Chi O Cafe,” busting hip hop moves like they were all Tiger Girls, and Kappa Delta, Delta Chi and Kappa Alpha showed “More Bang For Your Buck,” making it rain fake money on stage. 

Delta Zeta and FIJI delivered a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious “Practically Perfect” tribute to Mary Poppins complete with wobbling penguins that earned them Best Costume whilst Kappa Kappa Gamma and Theta Xi “Grease’d Up” the night with everyone’s favorite 70s musical rom-com. Pi Beta Phi, Pi Kappa Alpha and Theta Chi performed “Fire and Ice,” opening their act with Aerosmith, boys in blue ice-skating skirts and skate moves, and topping it off with a frozen “Let It Go” moment.  

Zeta Tau Alpha and Kappa Sigma had everyone “Dancing Through The Decades,” including the impressive running man in their performance. Closing out the afternoon, Phi Mu and Sigma Alpha Epsilon presented “Phight Night.” To add to each performance, each group created their own banners and props they brought onstage.

Each team had the opportunity to earn points through three other categories – ticket sales, best banner and social media. The event also served for the GBOD to present several members of the greek community with different awards. Chi Omega and ATO earned first place while Delta Gamma and TKE earned second place and Kappa Delta, Kappa Alpha and Delta Chi earned third place.  

“I’ve been dancing since I was 2 years old,” LSU biological engineering freshman Ashton Weber said. “I’m 19 now. I danced on the St. Thomas More Sparklers dance team for four years in my high school.” 

Weber, a Chi Omega, said she along with other chair Kirby Moore and Madison Landry created the choreography with the help of ATO senior vocal performance and biology major Erik Gudiel. 

“Working with Chi O this year has been amazing,” Gudiel said. “They all came into every practice fully prepared, knowing what to get done and knowing when to do it, for how long it’ll take, and they really helped all of our guys who had never danced before or don’t have a background in dance and just really got them into the dancing and taught it really well and really hyped all of our guys up into what you saw today.”