Our school’s long-advertised Glow Dance began yesterday, January 30, at 7:00 PM. Posters and cohort announcements advertised the event as a casual dance featuring black-lights, prompting students to wear neon and white clothing.

“The Glow Dance was pretty awesome, I have to say,” freshmen Andrew Arguello said. “What I didn’t like about was … people were throwing glow-sticks everywhere. A couple people whacked me in the eye.”

Volatile glowing sticks were not the only dimmers to the dance — some students complained the DJ was too restrictive. Several walked out of the auditorium for parts of the DJ’s set. “I think [the DJ] was a little controlling, like, ‘Let’s do this, let’s do this,’” Arguello continued.

Renee Neinhaus, sophomore, thought “it [was] an awesome dance. I believe we should have more of these ’cause I think dances aren’t just a great way to bring everybody together, but it’s also so people can meet with their friends … and not have to plan some big event themselves.”

Neinhaus also brought a hula hoop with LED lights to the Glow Dance, which she has been using for roughly half a year. “I saw a Youtuber, and she hooped for a while, and then I found out how to make my own,” Neinhaus said, explaining the origins of her hobby. “I just kinda practiced. I teach myself, I don’t take any classes or anything.”

Neinhaus’s electronic hula hoop was not the only luminary technology at the dance. One might have seen three students in white, fingertip-glowing gloves — senior Gabe Guzman, junior Nick Soultainian and sophomore Justin Taylor — performing finger acrobatics to manipulate the lights into complex patterns.

Guzman has been “gloving” the longest of the trio: four years. “I got a light show, from this kid, at a party … I thought it was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Guzman said.

“I looked up some videos and YouTube and it was not super popular. It was considered more of a phase back then,” Guzman continued, “and so I tried it out and I really wanted to do it. There was something about it [with] the music I listened to [that] went so … well.

“I liked the effect that it had on me, so I wanted to give that effect to other people, too,” he continued.

Justin Taylor’s beginnings lie on a different plane. “On this dance show ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ there was this guy named Cyrus, and he did tutting, which is … hand-coordination like making boxes,” Taylor said. “After that, I just got into waving and Gabe got me into gloving.”

Guzman inspired Taylor, which to led to Taylor inspiring Soultanian. “I started about a year ago [in choir], when I saw Justin doing a bunch of tuts and stuff,” Soultanian said. “I just thought it was the most coolest thing ever.

“So every choir class when we had free time,” he continued, “we would always start doing it and that’s what led me to my path of being a glover.”

Guzman was also passionate about the unsettling impressions of electronic dance music culture. “There’re a lot of stereotypes about drugs, and I want to prove that to be false where you don’t have be under any type of drug to enjoy the music, the culture, or the art of gloving.”