While we've been busy preparing our music for our 149th Annual Spring Concert and our East Coast tour, the Glee Club has also had some occasional small group performances.

MOCK ROCK X
A group of Clubbers opened up Mock Rock X on February 3, 2009 in Hill Auditorium. Mock Rock, a student-run fundraiser for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, is an annual fun night of performances by Michigan's various varsity sport teams. Through lip-syncing and interpretive dancing, teams compete to see who can make the biggest fools of themselves. Although the Glee Club would probably be quite good at that kind of thing, we did not compete. Instead, the group kicked the show off with the National Anthem followed by Varsity and The Victors. Mock Rock is one of the most fun occasions for Clubbers to roll out Varsity and The Victors because we are actually singing directly to Michigan's varsity AND victors. Mock Rock X featured Desmond Howard as the spokesman, with Fab Five member Jimmy King, former field hockey coach Marcia Pankratz, and recent gold-medalist Peter Vanderkaay as judges. The event raised nearly $75,000 for Mott Children's Hospital.

ABOVE: Glee Clubbers perform at Mock Rock X fundraiser. From left to right, FRONT: Ben Rizzo, Barry Deatrick, Keegan Schrider, Drew Bollinger. BACK (barely): Marcus Lewis, Carl Ciaramitaro Photo Credit: MGoBlue.com

PRIDE IN SAGINAW FUNDRAISER
As announced here, a Glee Club small group performed at the PRIDE in Saginaw Inc. fundraiser on February 16th, 2009. PRIDE, which stands for "Positive Results in a Downtown Environment", was presented with some patriotic songs (The National Anthem, My Country Tis Of Thee), some selections from our library of Michigan songs, and a fun little South African piece entitled "T'ink Of Me". There was even some (admittedly somewhat forced) crowd participation during "T'ink Of Me". Following the singing, at the request of Terry Rock, the fundraiser spokesman, each Clubber introduced himself to the crowd. In these introductions, many of the Clubbers tried to be funny, and some were even successful! In the spirit of "giving-to-poor-college-kids", the event hosts even let the Clubbers eat their food, so we were especially happy. [DISCLAIMER: feeding Clubbers after events is not required... but we probably won't say no if you offer.]

DANCE MARATHON 2009
Another small group from the Men's Glee Club sang the National Anthem during the first hour of University of Michigan Dance Marathon 2009. UMDM is a student-run fund raiser for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. Participants of Dance Marathon spend their months before this event getting monetary pledges for their upcoming feat: staying on their feet for 30 hours straight. From 10 a.m. Saturday, March 21 to 4 p.m. Sunday, March 22, the participants were on their feet. The Glee Clubbers enjoyed performing for such an awesome event and were humbled by the generosity and determination of the event participants. The event raised over $380,000 for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital.

ABOVE: Clubbers minutes before performing the National Anthem at UM Dance Marathon 2009. From left to right, Matt Griffith, Nate Hyson, Reed Blaylock, Matt Kodis, Evan Macy, Ben Rizzo, Charlie Mann, Scott Roffman, Miles Kaufmann, Marcus Lewis, Scott Venman, Keegan Schrider Not pictured: Ethan Eagle, Lee Quackenbush Photo Credit: Ethan Eagle (clubber)

MICHIGAN ALUMNI IN HILLSDALE BANQUET
On Saturday, March 21, one of our groups performed at a Michigan alumni banquet the Dow Leadership Center at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI. Clubbers raced out of their cars into the Center to watch the remainder of the Michigan-Oklahoma March Madness basketball game with fellow Wolverines. Following the game, Glee Club alumnus and event spokesman, Don Sanderson, joined us and we performed various Michigan songs for the banquet attendees. Sanderson, who was in the Glee Club during the legendary 1967 Glee Club world tour, even arranged for a piano accompanist to assist the group in the performance. Sanderson was also in the group when they debuted the song "Go Blue", so we were on our toes to do the song justice in front of (and alongside) him. Although the basketball team lost, the Clubbers enjoyed performing for the alumni and it was cool for us to see how there really are Michigan alumni everywhere.