Imagine this: hundreds and hundreds of seats filled with beaming Harvard and Yale students, each cheering, clapping, and shouting iterations of “Let’s go Yale!” alongside, of course, the less popular phrase “Let’s Go Crimson!” This is the Harvard-Yale game: the only time you’ll see so many Yalies sharing the same space as Harvard kids. For most people, the Harvard-Yale game is the ultimate embodiment of the deep seated rivalry between the two oldest schools in the country. When students talk about their school winning the game, what they actually mean is that their respective Ivy is the “best” (we tend to forget, however, that schools like Columbia or Princeton are also competing for that title). But what many people do not know is that on Saturday after the Game, a second rivalry plays out on stage t. Every year, student organizations associated with the Black Student Alliance at Yale and Harvard’s Black Students Association participate in the annual Harvard-Yale showcase. The showcase features an array of performances by Yale groups, such as Shades, Yale’s premiere a cappella group rooted in the diaspora, and Rhythmic Blue, Yale’s only hip hop inspired group, alongside similar performance groups from Harvard. This year the showcase, titled “Body and Soul,” will take place at Lowell Lecture Hall at 8pm. At last year’s show, the crowd was so pumped and excited that it made performing, for me, such an exhilarating experience. So, if you feel like you need to top Yale’s football victory with another assertion of our greatness, come out and enjoy the show!

Harvard-Yale Takes the Stage was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.