Tonight was the biggest celebration of the whole session. After weeks of planning and preparation, our 9th graders finally revealed their surprise theme for the end of session banquet, and this was a good one. They called it “Badquet” because the theme was “villains,” a fun mashup of odious characters from different television shows and movies. It turns out, there are a lot of “bad guys” to include, so the girls not only painted many well-known characters, they dressed as different characters too.
Here are just a few: Swiper, Lord Farquaad, Scar, Moriarty, Maleficent, Dr. Doofenshmertz, The White Witch, the Wicked Witch of the West, Medusa, Cruella de Vil, and Mother Gothel.
The theme tied all these characters together by imagining that they all were “Lost in Space” and encountered several green, 3-eyed aliens, played by the girls’ counselors. Soon there was a heated “dance battle” between the aliens and the villainous ones. It wasn’t clear who “won” the battle, though soon the entire dining hall was up dancing together. In between serving the different courses of the meal, the characters entertained the rest of the camp with several choreographed dance numbers.
The food was classic banquet fare with inventive names: Moonbeam mozzarella sticks, Meteor Mac-n-cheese, Saturn’s onion rings, Alien chicken fingers, killer fruit kabobs, and cosmic brownies for dessert.
Everyone agreed the decorations were some of the best ever shown at a banquet. Each painted panel had fantastic details and very realistic proportions and colors. Many of the live action characters were also represented on the panels, like James and Jessie of Team Rocket for example.
The final part of the banquet is a tradition where the 9th grade girls (CAs) sing a song to their counselors thanking them and expressing their connection with each other. The counselors likewise sing a song back to the campers. The 10th grade girls and their counselors follow with the same. A few of the girls were a bit teary at times and laughing with big smiles at others during the songs. These girls been through a lot together, working side-by-side painting almost 90 paper panels and implementing all the details of their special surprise party.
One CA told me that this was her favorite year of camp so far, and since she’s been a Rockbrook girl for 7 years, that’s an incredible endorsement of what came from this group effort. The collective focus on this one complex project brought the girls even closer together and, as we saw tonight, had beautiful, really fun, results.
