Amid controversy, AKAs ‘Step Off’ at Sprite competition

Alexandria Prather took to her Facebook last week in the wake of a step dance controversy.

The junior said she wanted the world to know this: “TAU step is the best sorority step team in the nation. Period.”

Prather is a member of IU’s TAU Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., which placed second nationally at the Sprite Step Off competition on Feb. 20 in Atlanta.

The competition’s winning sorority was Zeta Tau Alpha’s Epsilon Chapter of the University of Arkansas, which won a check for $100,000 in scholarships.

But after announcing a “scoring discrepancy” Thursday, the competition’s sponsor, Coca-Cola, declared AKA and ZTA co-first place winners, each receiving $100,000 scholarship checks.

The 10 members of AKA who competed in the competition were all black. AKA was the only team from Indiana to compete on a national level.

The winning ZTA team was all white, a fact that, Prather said, was made to seem like their singular “wow factor.”

Stepping is a traditionally African-American art form rooted in a combination of African rhythmic percussive dance, old schoolyard chants and a military close-order and exhibition drill.

From the time the AKA team was announced as second place by rapper Ludacris, the step-off’s host, Prather said ZTA had experienced an unending wave of boos from the approximately 5,000 people in the crowd.

In that respect, Prather said she felt bad for them.

“It’s not that they were bad,” she said. “They were a good step team, one of the best teams there. But we should’ve gotten first place, point blank.”

Prather argued that the AKA routine was both step-perfect and complicated, while ZTA incorporated simpler steps, though they were executed well.

Prather and AKA supporters said they believed the competition was rigged.

IU alumnus James Bigsbee, and member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., helped choreograph the steps AKA had been perfecting since they spontaneously formed a step team last September under the direction of junior Jasmine Starks, the TAU chapter president.  

“If you look at the Divine Nine black fraternities and sororities, let’s say they each have a superpower, one has fire and the other freezing,” Bigsbee explained. “The girls of ZTA hired choreographers and took something from all nine organizations. That’s what people mean when they talk about stealing. We saw signature movements from the Divine Nine in their routine.”

In their cast biography for the MTV2 series, ZTA “admittedly acquired their step skills from the AKAs on campus. However, they have taken what they learned, made it their own, and perfected it.”

Before their first regional competition, the IU AKA members had four days to create an original routine and competed in several competitions before advancing to Atlanta.
Bigsbee said up until the Sprite Step Off, the AKAs had been judged by other greeks, people who understood what stepping was all about.

At the Sprite Step Off, the first large-scale national competition of its kind, the judges included R&B singers Monica and TLC’s Chilli.  

“We were the real underdogs,” Prather said. “We were from Indiana and the best, and people only think stepping is in the south.”

Prather said it seemed natural that with celebrity and network television endorsement, ZTA were poised to place high in the competition, if not win.

“It’s all just become a reality show, and that’s obviously just not real,” she said.

The debate has gravitated to YouTube and Facebook. On the YouTube video of ZTA’s winning routine, which has received more than 400,000 views, there are more than 2,000 comments ranging from accusations of racism to sympathetic support for the sisters of ZTA. 

Prather said in the wake of the situation, there has been a storm of press in Atlanta and elsewhere, both in favor of and against the AKAs. Essentially, the press has pitted the two co-winning sororities against one another.

But Starks called the opportunity to compete “a blessing” and a chance to represent AKA nationally after seven years of inactivity on IU’s campus. The sisters recently celebrated their first-year anniversary on Feb. 22.

Starks said her team also recognized the tenacity and creativity of their competition at the Sprite Step Off.

The scholarship money will be used to support the step team members’ education and the TAU chapter.

Starks added that she and her sisters she will be looking forward to other step competitions — the annual Atlanta Greek Picnic and the Little 500 Step Down.

“We accomplished what we set out to accomplish,” Prather said. “If people need to know anything else, they can Google us.”