At the 32nd annual talent show at the West Las Vegas Library last Monday evening, hair colored in shades of mom—the ashen-wheat family—bobbed along to vignette after vignette of young black girls jukin' in sync in various degrees of lasciviousness. The girls popped their booties, smacked that ass, worked and twerked that thing, and we put our hands in the air and waved 'em like we just didn't care. All Star Buck Fam, a group of half a dozen young black guys, took the stage by storm with a dance-off that combined the hyper elements of krump with a whole lot more popping—flexing, even—and looked like a cross between break-dancing and a bodybuilding competition. Hooting, grunting and quacking like barnyard animals or tennis players, they worked it so hard belts and diamond stud earrings were flying off.
The curtains closed, then opened again, and two dozen Little Miss Sunshines in bright metallic-silver robot disco pants-outfits were cartwheeling, flipping and hopping into and out of pyramids, and when they weren't doing that, jogging in place. An incredibly grating hi-NRG techno song blasted through the nearly blown-out speakers, and two dozen even tinier, even more precocious little tumblers took the floor and shook their hips.
Time after time, whenever a performer or an instructor was asked to explain the motives and theory behind a group, he or she thanked the Lord—for blessing everyone with "the craft" or for being "real," always for keeping these kids out of trouble. Time after time, rounds of approving "mm-hmm"s percolated throughout the theater.
The night closed with a young TLC-like trio called Flavaz, who the emcee announced had invented their own genre of music called "Just For Us." The curtains opened to three lonely mics awash in a yellow glow and piped-in hectic nu-jazz not unlike the type of preset Casio baloney you hear during a dramatic reenactment on America's Most Wanted. Three girls in matching white cargo pants and sweatshirts strutted on the stage harmonizing their own name like nobody's business.
Many, many long Flavaz songs later, the journey was over. Not much lasts in Las Vegas, but the talent show at the West Las Vegas Library is still going strong.