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Editorial: Show Choir’s big show
Op-Ed · February 04, 2016


Community leaders, take note of Saturday Night Jive, a relatively new event that brings a thousand people to West Branch High School.


First off, the show choir competition, sponsored by the West Branch show choirs as a fundraiser, brings some great entertainment to town.

This is the third year of the event, and it attracted 10 show choirs from around Iowa and one from northern Wisconsin, not to mention performances by the three local show choirs: Christopher Jive and the Uptown 45, the original group; JiveWired, the middle school group; and EnerJive, the prep group that started this year.

Each show is about 15 minutes of singing and dancing in costumes that range from glitter and suits to droids and Jedi. No joke: One group had a Star Wars theme this year, complete with an “exploding” Death Star and lightsabers.

The music is typically upbeat — though each performance requires at least one ballad — and the dance choreography shows months of practice and imagination.

As host, the West Branch show choirs do not compete for prizes. Yet show choirs are relatively few and far between school districts, so demand for competitions is high. The show choir that came from Flambeau, Wis., traveled more than 400 miles here to compete on a level playing field. Only big schools have show choirs around Flambeau.

Other schools came pretty far as well: Des Moines Christian (120 miles), Pella (100 miles), West Burlington (75 miles), Keota (60 miles), Fort Madison (100 miles), Emmetsburg (250 miles) and more. In fact, only one school at the competition came from the River Valley Conference: West Liberty.

Almost all of the high school show choir students get assigned a job, yet dozens of parents help throughout the day as well, so much so that they park off-site to leave room for competing schools’ fans. Just the fans — the school buses and trucks that carry the show choirs to the high school park off-site as well. Shuttles run all day.

This is a fundraiser, so we don’t want to take away from that. They sell concessions all day. But the community may want to work with Saturday Night Jive in other ways that could benefit the city, from tours of the Hoover Complex to booths showcasing what West Branch has to offer to both families and businesses that locate here.

Either way, West Branch offers another big entertainment event each year with high quality and lots and lots of visitors.

It is another source of pride, and an opportunity as well.