The 36th annual Florida Invitational Step Show kicked off Saturday with a talent showcase at Bo Diddley Plaza in downtown Gainesville, followed by a performance in the University Auditorium.
The University of Florida’s Black Student Union hosted events throughout the weekend, with the main goal of bringing people together and sharing Black culture with the community.
Ameerah Balogun is a 21-year-old UF junior and the president of the BSU. As one of the event organizers, she said she has been coordinating the group’s biggest event of the year since her term began in March 2025.
“I feel like I’ve done my job when I see people having fun, smiling and experiencing something new where anybody can come out,” she said.
She added that the event is an opportunity for people to express themselves and feel free during a time in the world filled with hostility.
“The message I want people to take away from this show is that FISS is bigger than them,” Balogun said. “It’s bigger than the individual; it’s more than a step show.”
Both The Demo at Bo Diddley Plaza and the Florida Invitational Step Show in the University Auditorium featured dancing, stepping and strolling.
Jason Occean, a contestant during an interactive audience routine, sings during a Florida Invitational Step Show event on Saturday at Bo Diddley Plaza.
Strolling, a type of dance from which stepping derived, originated in the early 1900s as Black collegiate Greek organizations began performing the dances.
Stepping is a more modern dance routine that those organizations — known as the Divine Nine — performed; it emerged in the 1940s during fraternity initiation rituals. The two dances are similar, but stepping includes movement in formation and a signature step-call-move structure, according to a University of Arizona article.
Carol Velasques Richardson, the 59-year-old cultural affairs manager for the city of Gainesville, spoke to the crowd at Bo Diddley Plaza and thanked them for coming to represent their communities.
She said Mayor Harvey Ward and the city of Gainesville will always support the Black community.
Stepping and other Divine Nine dance traditions extend beyond UF and are represented across the Gainesville community. “It is truly transcendent,” she said. “We have Asian steppers; we have all people that come together.”
The dance performances began within Black Greek organizations, which formed when black students were denied access to white fraternities and sororities. The groups used the performances to show their organizations bond and create traditions according to an article from Alpha Phi Gamma’s website.
The first publicly performed “Greek Show” was at Howard University in 1976, according to an article by The Dig, a publication at Howard University.
Gabriel Henry is a 20-year-old UF sophomore studying biology and a member of the university’s chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma. He and his brothers performed their routines at the events on Saturday.
Henry said he joined his fraternity for the brotherhood and the service. At performances, he said their goal is to “show out.”
“As long as we put a smile on their face, as long as they’re cheering, as long as they’re laughing and having fun, as long as they’re jovial, that’s all I want from them,” Henry said.
