FlyBy donned our Sunday best every day last week while heading to each house's spring formal. Our guide to the balls being inadequate, a more thorough investigation was necessary. Below: Leverett, Dunster and Quincy.

Leverett:

Leverett has never been known as a “cool” house, so when its HoCo tossed aside plans for an ultra-fancy formal at the top of Boston’s Prudential Center in favor of a standard in-house affair, you can understand why some (FlyBy among them) thought it would be business as usual in everyone’s favorite pit stop on the way to fun in Mather.

But those who decided to pass up Lev’s “Casablanca”-themed spring formal haven’t been paying enough attention, because things at Mill and Dewolfe have been different as of late. If Leverett’s open-list spat over its formal location showed anything, it was that, for the first time in FlyBy’s memory, more than a handful of people actually cared about the going-ons of Leverett. And as it turns out, when people actually care about the house, it can be a pretty cool place—or at least throw a pretty cool formal.

FlyBy gives the Lev HoCo some major props for its creative and varied use of house space. Matted stills from the classic 1942 film lined the walls connecting the formal’s three main areas, each of which had a decidedly different feel. Those looking for the typical Harvard dance experience—i.e., sweaty writhing in a dark room with DJ Straus—found what they wanted in the Lev Old Library. Across the hall in the JCR, formal-goers enjoyed a tasty chocolate fountain while random revelers, presumably aided by the free-flowing open bar (FlyBy and friends had no problem doubling up on drinks), struck up tunes on the piano.

But the real heart of the formal was the outdoor tent in the courtyard, which housed said open bar, a handful of small dining tables, and a light jazz band that made up for not being good by…well, just being there. (The swing-dancing couples didn’t seem to care who was playing, anyway.) And while some cost-cutting measures were evident—note to Lev HoCo: FlyBy could recognize that second-rate HUDS hummus and tabouli anywhere—the 510 students who purchased tickets got to experience something entirely new: for one night, at least, Leverett was cool.

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Dunster:

Fête. Bacchanalia. Hell, we’ll even throw in Mather Lather (it’s close enough to formal season). These signature House dances help define their homes.

Dunster’s HoCo was apparently attempting to give the House a trademark event of its own in naming this year’s formal—Beltane.