Difficulties lead to Invisible Children dance cancellation

When the first scheduled Word for the Heard dance was rescheduled last fall, some students were disappointed. Now the cancellation of the dance has disappointed many more students who were planning to attend.

Thanks to multiple difficulties, the Invisible Children club’s Word for the Unheard dance, also known as the Loggy dance, won’t take place this year. Club presidents junior Haley Wong and Mary Johnson are currently devising a way to refund the prospective attendees’ money.

Plans for the dance, which was going to feature the rapper Alex Loggerman (a Saratoga High graduate whose rapper name is Loggy), had been in the making since last school year, but the club could not find a opportunity to host it. It was originally scheduled in November, but once again, the officers faced difficulties.

“A concert takes a lot of technology and since there [was] band competition on the [original November] date we had planned, all of the people at our school who would have set it up were going to be gone,” Johnson said.

The alternative to this would have been to hire outside help to set up the dance, but the cost would have surpassed the profit made from the tickets.

Most of the complications arose due to issues in the details of planning and set-up. The dance was first postponed to February, but the officers decided it would be better to cancel the event for this school year after a scheduling conflict with a possible Media Arts Program hosted dance in the same month.

Eventually, Johnson and Wong decided to put off the plans for the Word for the Unheard dance for the rest of the school year.

“We would have loved to do it sooner but as a lot of people may know, it is close to impossible to schedule anything this late in the year since the calendar is so booked,” Johnson said.

The lack of student enthusiasm also contributed to the final cancellation of the event. However, many students who did plan on attending were disappointed at the verdict.

Sophomore Katie Truong, who bought a ticket for the dance earlier this year, was disappointed to find out about the cancellation.

“I was excited to go to see the live performance by Loggy and to have another dance [at school],” Truong said. “[But] I understand that there was no good time this year to put the dance.”

Freshman Jessica Uong also was looking forward to the dance.

“It sounded fun and it’s for a good cause. [I was excited] because it wasn’t going to be just another dance, it’d be a concert as well,” Uong said.

Though the dance is off for this year, Johnson says that the dance is confirmed for the next school year.

“We don’t have an exact date yet but we’re working on it,” Johnson said. “There have been a lot of misunderstandings, and I hope it’s clear that Haley and I have been trying really hard. We have devoted a ton of time into making this happen for the sake of Invisible Children.”