A dazzling array of performances ranging from rapping to the more traditional singing with acoustic guitar accompaniment graced the stage at the Interact Club’s Tijuana benefit concert Dec. 2 and 3. The concert helped raise funds for the club’s trip to Tijuana.

Senior Tijuana leaders Jin-Kyung Kim, Avery Naar and Danielle Negrin are helping to lead the group of 16 students. On Dec. 15 the group will fly down to San Diego and then drive across the border into Tijuana to begin working with the program Esperanza, or “hope” in Spanish. The program works together with college and high school volunteers to help build houses for families in Tijuana.

Negrin explained that the concert is one of the best ways that the group raises money. This is the fourth year a Tijuana group has done a fund-raising concert and this year the group decided to extend the concert to two nights.

“We want to raise as much money as we can so we don’t have to pay out of our own pockets,” Negrin said. “Hopefully this concert will get the money rolling.”

The group will have to pay over $12,000 in travel expenses. The amount of money each Tijuana group member has to pay decreases in proportion to how much money the group is able to raise.

The group was able to raise over $1500 through a combination of fund-raising activities including selling food at a football game, a car wash and this concert.

Along with the variety of performances on both nights, there was a dance competition between the Tijuana group's boys and girls. Kim said that the idea developed as a way to get the group to participate in the concert. “We wanted people in [the Tijuana group] to get involved in the actual performance,” Kim said. “So we said, ‘Let’s have a dance-off between the girls and boys’.”

The boys, dressed in white shirts and black leather jackets, performed as teen idols, dancing to music by Michael Jackson and N’Sync. They faced off against the girls, who were dressed in colorful ’80s clothing and danced to a mix of music, including a coordinated dance in the dark with glow sticks.

Senior Tijuana volunteer Suhail Shaikh helped organize the boys’ dance. He said that both the girls and boys teams had good elements, and the dance competition ended in a tie.

“I would say [the boys’] dance was funnier and cooler, but [the girls] were more organized and were really together,” Shaikh said. “I’d give it a tie in the spirit of us all being on the same team.”

Interact club advisor Dave Deggeller closed the concert on Friday night. Deggeller’s band, Secret Primper, played songs from his soon-to-be released CD, “Damaged Art.”

Deggeller will not be going with this year’s Tijuana trip in order to take care of his newly born son Charlie. Deggeller has been involved with the trip for the past eight years and has gone five times before.

Although he will not be going, he is excited for this year’s group. “The students seem really tight, excited,” Deggeller said. “A lot of group bonding has already occurred.”

In the absence of Deggeller, business law teacher Patricia Bruegger will chaperone the trip along with science teacher Joshua Bloom and math teacher Daisy Renazco, who is a Tijuana veteran.

On Friday night, Deggeller played a song he wrote last year about how he has been inspired by the students who helped build houses in Tijuana. In the song, Deggeller asks, “Can you change a life by building a roof?” This winter break the group of 19 students and three chaperones will find out.