Crowds dress up, dance at 45th Beaux Arts Ball
The audience dances and cheers during DJ Salva’s performance at Beaux Arts Music Ball in Lexington, Ky., on Saturday, April 19, 2014. Photo by Marcus Dorsey
April 21, 2014
By Will Wright | Assistant News Editor
Lights flashed and heavy bass pumped out of Buster’s Billiards & Backroom on Saturday night.
Hundreds of people dressed in outlandish outfits and funny costumes for the 45th Beaux Arts Ball, a dance and fashion party organized by College of Design students for charity.
The electronic music, light shows and costumes came together for a night where everyone could bring out their creative side.
Besides being a charity event, Beaux Arts “is really an assimilation of all types of art,” said Karen Tate, an architecture junior and one of the five students who organized the party. “It’s a really good showcase for up-and-coming people.”
The event raised money for the Kentucky Center for the Arts Foundation, the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center, the Home of the Innocents and Broke Spoke Community Bike Sports.
Many of the musicians and other artists were from the Lexington and Central Kentucky area and saw Beaux Arts as a way to show their pieces to a large and artistic crowd.
Three architecture seniors created a tunnel with walls that lit up like a desktop screensaver.
“All three of us wanted to build it full scale,” said Thomas Grubbs, who worked for about a week building the tunnel. “Beaux Arts kind of gave us that opportunity.”
For many others, the party was an opportunity to dress up in costumes, dance and socialize.
“It’s all about the people … who get to express a side of themselves that they normally don’t get to express,” said Bailey Reed, an animal science sophomore. “The first year I didn’t know (that people dressed in costumes) and showed up in a dress. I learned the next year to wear a costume.”
One couple wore Pac-Man costumes, two men dressed as Hunter S. Thompson and some sported other flashy, and sometimes revealing, attire.
“Beaux Arts is all about a good time, letting lose and expressing yourself,” said architecture senior Adrian Elder. “You’ve got to look good and you’ve got to have fun.”
In 2012, the most recent year included on the website, Beaux Arts pulled in more than $45,000 for various charities. The total amount of money raised at this year’s event has not yet been released.
“You get to come out and have a good time,” said Aj Crush, a business marketing sophomore at Northern Kentucky University. “And it’s all for a good cause.”
