WCC’s got talent: students line up to show their stuff, good or bad

Julianne Mattera

Staff Writer

jumattera@wccnet.edu Ten minutes before the close of Washtenaw Community College’s annual talent show auditions, students and staff were dancing and frolicking on Towsley Auditorium’s stage working off energy and riding on a high of a slew of generally impressive auditions. For the previous few hours, Towsley’s stage was home to anyone who wanted to perform. Audience members watched as hip hop and b-boy dancers popped, locked and sashayed all over the stage; a cappella singers hit notes that gave onlookers the chills; and others performed prose and poetry readings. “The acts this year seem more prepared than last year,” said Rachel Barsch, Student Activities events coordinator. “I’m glad to see students putting in a lot of effort this year.” About 27 acts tried out for the talent show, but Barsch said only 20 or so will make the cut for the 2½-hour talent show on Nov. 11. From auditions to their fifteen minutes of fame on Towsley’s stage, students have a month to whip their routines into shape. But there’s more to these students’ talent than meets the eye.

Creepy tribute

Kevin Leistner, 32, walked up to the stage in a rumpled, tan suit without a note card or a microphone when he auditioned. It was story time for Leistner and his audience, and no props were necessary to make his tale stand out. Leistner recited Alvin Schwartz’s “The Hearse Song,” eyes glowing and hands gesturing to amplify worms crawling in and out and visions of eyes turning into dust. Even at the auditions, his grave storytelling entrapped the audience in the spooky, morbid prose. Leistner has been working with school and community theatres for more than 20 years, and he wanted to share Schwartz’s morbid tales to an audience who, he feels, is no longer in touch with the author’s work. “Most people, now-a-days, don’t know who he is,” Leistner said. “And he just has such wonderful graphically gruesome pieces. I just love his work.” And Leistner admits he has always had a “sick taste in media.” “I love horror movies and Edgar Allen Poe, just the macabre and creepy,” he said. “There’s just something about it – it’s so disturbing you have to like it.”

A whirl of a twirl

Dressed in a pink and black polka-dot getup and twirling a baton in one hand, Kayla Dillon, 18, later admitted she was basically twirling blind onstage to her act’s upbeat big-band music. But a pasted-on smile never left her face. Even with lights glaring her vision, Dillon gracefully tossed and caught a baton between her legs, and later cart-wheeled with a baton suspended in midair. Yes, she caught that one, too. “I practice three times a week . . . for about 3½ hours, maybe four,” Dillon said. Dillon began baton twirling when she was 12. Her mother saw an ad about baton twirling, and she hoped it would help improve her daughter’s self-esteem and weight problems. “The better I got, the more self-confident I got. It’s like a work out, so I started to lose weight . . . about 45 pounds,” Dillon said. “It boosted my self-esteem. It was the one thing in high school that kept me going.” Now she teaches twirling classes to 12-year-old girls. “Not only do I teach them how to twirl and the techniques, but I teach them how to build their self-confidence as a team,” Dillon said. “So they’re learning team-building skills, how to be kind, how to be nice, good sportsmanship. It’s really nice to see when they’re changing and being better people.”

Hip hop in memoriam

Willie Baker, 25, grew up in a community where guys didn’t know how to dance. At home, he had been dancing his whole life. “I kind of hid it,” Baker said. “But when I finally got the courage to be in a talent show, and I was in the show, a lot of people were like ‘you’re a really good dancer. I didn’t know you could dance.’ And that motivated me to start showing more people my talent.” His older sister, Chrissy Satterfield, was good at dancing. She was murdered when Baker was 13. From then on, dancing had a whole new meaning. “She taught me to dance hip hop, and I always watched her growing up,” Baker said. “So it’s kind of a personal tribute to her every time I do perform. But it’s like dancing kind of went down the line in the family, and it was her favorite hobby to do. And it became mine, too.” Dancing soon became part of his daily life. He formed dance groups in high school that performed across the Midwest. And, after he moved away from home, Baker always managed to get a dance group together. Even when he’s walking through WCC’s campus on to his next class, Baker said he’s dancing in his head, visualizing new dance routines. Baker moved to Washtenaw County last year, and at the encouragement of a high school buddy, he and a few friends formed the dance group, PatchWerk. “We all just kind of joined together,” Baker said. “That’s why we called it PatchWerk because we were all just thrown together like patches.” PatchWerk won first place at the talent show last year for its routine that combined ballet and hip hop. “I would tell people that if they have a talent, they should use it to the best of their ability and not let it go to waste. . . .,” Baker said. “If it’s where their heart is at, they should follow their heart.”