The room was packed with sixth- and seventh-graders, black lights transforming clothes, hats, pants, shoes and teeth into vibrant shades of neon somewhere along the brighter slice of the visual spectrum.
The students were pretty vibrant all on their own. At Ivy Academy in Soddy-Daisy, they filled the dance floor – whose secret identity in daylight hours is the cafeteria – with a frenetic blend of swirling and pogoing and laughing and screaming.
Shawn Ryan
Yeah, a school dance for kids this age is quite a smile-inducing sight. The sheer exuberance – except for the too-cool kids sitting on the periphery, gazing at phones – was monumentally fun to watch.
But also eye-opening was the music being played. Sure, there was Meghan Trainor, Carrie Underwood, Bruno Mars and John Legend, but there also was Bon Jovi and Survivor and MC Hammer and Journey and Queen and – gasp! – Neil Diamond. In fact, the older acts far outweighed the newer ones on the playlist. And the students knew all the songs.
Ivy teacher Laura Weaver, playing deejay for the night, said many of the older songs were requested by the students. And where had they first heard them? Their parents played them.