When junior James Hartley attended the O-Show as a first-year in fall 2023, one group in particular caught his attention: BlackOut, Tufts’ all-male step team. Even though he had no dance experience, Hartley was inspired by their performance. Following a club fair event hosted by the Africana Center, he met a member of the team, who encouraged him to audition. Hartley is now the team’s captain.
BlackOut is dedicated to stepping, a percussive dance rooted in African-American culture. The group brings in new members every year, expanding and evolving with each new class of dancers. First-years Gershom Magutu and Mekhai Valentine joined the team after learning about the team through their pre-orientation program, Students’ Quest for Unity in the African Diaspora. They also had no experience with step prior to joining the team.
BlackOut’s members perform with the adage of “One Sight, One Sound,” and their commitment to synchronization sets them apart from step teams at other schools, along with their explosive performance style.
“We dress the same, we step the same and we stay together,” Hartley said. “Every beat that we make, we all have to do it at the same time, so we’re all consistent and the same. We’re also really big and explosive with our movements. … We try to keep it huge, use our whole body.”
The team has a large repertoire of steps that have been passed down between club members over the last two decades. For each performance, the team will pick a combination of steps to learn and polish, and they’ll rehearse until the entire team is moving as a single unit. Each fall semester begins with the recruitment and training of new members and culminates with Break the Stage, the group’s biggest on-campus performance of the year. Break the Stage, an annual step competition hosted by Tufts that brings in teams from throughout the Boston area, typically draws large crowds in Cohen Auditorium.
In the spring, the group transitions into competition season, which often comes with big rewards for the team. In 2020, they won UpStaged, the national championship for collegiate step teams, and in 2023, they competed in the finals of the World of Dance championships.
The group’s members emphasized how much each competition season means to them.
“We’re very competitive,” Valentine said. “We like to win, but at the end of the day, if we don’t win, we know that we came there, we did our job, we did what we could and then we bounce back.”
BlackOut has become such a successful team thanks to the hard work of its past members, so good record-keeping is incredibly important. The group documents its history carefully and maintains a video archive of past performances.
“We have a rule book that basically maintains what our form of step is and what we want to keep core to the BlackOut identity,” Hartley said. “It’s about 50 pages of things that we keep consistent.”
The members of BlackOut stick together both inside and outside of rehearsals. For Valentine, it was the community of the group that convinced him to commit.
“At first, I was not locked into being in BlackOut,” Valentine said. “I was scared. I didn’t really think that I was gonna be able to stick with it, but over time, I grew into it. Everyone around me became someone I could rely on.”
Hartley echoed Valentine’s comments, emphasizing the importance of having a space to destress from academic challenges.
“Everyone at BlackOut [rehearsals] comes from super stressful days,” Hartley said. “I feel like we all collectively take our minds off of that and really focus on the step. At least for me, especially in my earlier years, when I had a lot of schoolwork and coursework, I’d always be able to come to BlackOut and just release and forget about it and just give it my all.”
BlackOut is a close community, but at the end of the day, they take immense pride in their performances. And for members who are new to step, there’s nothing like the thrill of performing in front of a live audience. Valentine agreed, saying his first performance at Break the Stage was an especially rewarding experience.
“That was my first time being on a stage like that, in the context of being in a dance group,” Valentine said. “It’s an unmatched feeling. I play music, I’ve performed on many stages with an instrument in my hand but performing with that art form is unmatched, and it’s an entirely different feeling. It feels crazy, but it’s very rewarding.”
