Maria Heredia Rojas

Contributing Writer

The following is a reflection piece from Maria Heredia Rojas, a junior Mathematics major from Hazelton, PA. 

After three years, I still get scared when someone asks me to go backstage in the Abeloff Center of Performing Arts. I never go alone and if I do, I know at least one of my teammates is already down there. My roommate had to join me while I wrote and observed. It is a completely different world no one sees.

Leaving the stage and running down the stairs, past costumes and water bottles of dancers who have no time to make it all the way down between numbers, the energy shifts immediately. You go from bright lights and everyone cheering for you to standing in the middle of the first dressing room. The world narrows, and the conversations fade. The room has undecided beige walls and no windows.

I listen to the songs and wait for the exact moment where I need to start running to the other side of the stage; it is the only way I can tell how much time has passed.

The entire dressing room smells like dust. After a year away, the smell is strongest your first time walking in. The air conditioning system does not work and just collects dust. The vents are coated in gray film that would probably feel like chalk between your fingers. The dust forms shapes in the corners of the room; some are weird clouds, and some are perfect triangles split where the walls meet.

It would probably take an entire bottle of Windex just to clean the mirrors.

I cannot imagine worse lighting for a dressing room. Most of the mirrors have no lights, and the ones that do glow with a weird yellow that makes everything look off. One extra lightbulb is mounted awkwardly on the wall instead of hanging from the ceiling.

If the lighting is bad, the closet space is worse. The room has one closet that fits maybe twenty packed hangers, even though there are about forty-five costumes per room. Some people bring clothing racks, but most of the time costumes end up on the floor, the empty table in the corner, or inside the overflowing Vera Bradley duffel bags we somehow all have. The already small room becomes an obstacle course.

Despite how dull and suffocating it feels, the dressing room is never still. You walk straight into silent chaos. Charlie sits in the corner with an ice pack pressed to her leg, Kayla redoes her ponytail for the third time using my hairspray, and Ren asks whoever seems least busy to zip up her costume.

Everyone is in a rush. Even though it feels isolated, the audience can hear us, so everything happens quietly.

Beyond the first dressing room is the path to the second one and the other stage entrance. That hallway is the scariest part of the entire space. Anyone taller 5 feet 4 inches has to duck, or risk getting a concussion from the massive piece of metal over them. There is no light, so both dressing rooms keep their doors for mediocre lighting.

The rest of the space is filled with junk I cannot even begin to name. The only thing that stands out to me is the trash can right in the middle. At first, I thought it was a little silly because it was in the way, but then I saw three different girls using it to throw up after dancing, and I was glad it was there.

When you make it to the other dressing room, there are very few differences. Their extra table is slimmer, and instead of a closet, they have a singular clothing rack. However, this dressing room fits more people; you would think they get the closet.

What I remember most about this room, though, is the annual Ugg slippers. The last two years we have found a pair behind the clothing rack; same style, same size, just a different color. We start practicing in Abeloff the Monday before showcase and leave with all our stuff Sunday after the second show. Tianna always says if they are still there when we leave, she will take them. She now has two pair.

After moving through the mess backstage, you return to the stage. No one in the audience knows what went on down there.

This backstage area clearly has not been updated since Abeloff was built, but we keep using it and making it work. Sometimes I think the cleaning staff forgets it exists. I have walked into the dressing room full of empty beer cans left behind from a Greek life event a month earlier, to realize later there is a used fake lash stuck on my mirror from another dance team. Sometimes the lack of sanitation grosses me out, but I like thinking about how we share the same stage but live completely different lives outside of it.

It is strange how a place so unremarkable can mean so much to me. The space is not beautiful or historic, and I doubt a tour guide would show it to visiting families. But it is real and so special.

Behind the curtains, in a place most people will never think about, all the beauty begins. The audience sees the amazing performance, but the real story starts in the quiet chaos below it.