DINING SERVICES WINS GOLD IN NACUFS COMPETITION

Clowns, cancan girls, jugglers and even a mermaid lit up the Bryn Mawr dining halls last December, as Dining Services student workers dressed up to bring turn-of-the-century Paris' underworld alive. In late April, Bryn Mawr College Dining Services was honored by the National Association of College and University Foods Services for its Moulin Rouge theme dinner. BMCDS won another in a long series of gold medals in the Loyal W. Horton Dining Awards.

Steven Sensenich, Haffner unit manager, and Samara Schwartz '05, Haffner's head supervisor, were responsible for much of the planning and organization that went into making the dinner a success. Under their direction, BMCDS has won gold before: in 2002, their theme dinner "Women Buccaneers of the Caribbean" took not only first prize among small schools, but grand prize in all divisions. A "Colonial History" dinner in 2001 took the gold in the small-school division. Schwartz, a history major, was particularly concerned with keeping the details of the "Moulin Rouge" dinner historically accurate. "We wanted to keep the historical context of the concept rather than just imitating the Moulin Rouge! film," she said. "We used the movie as a jumping-off point instead of a script," Sensenich added.

The dinner itself began in Haffner and Erdman, where students were served Parisian cuisine at elegantly set tables ornamented with candelabras. Dessert was served in Rhoads, where the tables had been moved to the walls to make room for the theatrics, which included hired performers — a tangoing couple, an accordionist, a magician, fire jugglers and tarot card readers — as well as student workers.

Preparations for the dinner began early in the fall and lasted up until the day of the event. The costumes worn by Dining Services workers in the roles of cancan girls were sewn by Sensenich and took six weeks to complete. The dancers themselves practiced for hours in the days leading up to the dinner; they plan to reprise their cancan dance in the fall Dance Concert. "The contest judges look for the 'wow factor,'" Schwartz noted. "They look for what really stands out. We picked snippets from the movie, like the dancers, and brought them to life."

In July, Sensenich and Director of Dining Services Bernie Chung will travel to New Orleans for the Annual NACUFS Conference, where Bryn Mawr will be judged against the gold-medal winners in the medium- and large-school divisions for the grand prize in the theme-dinner category.

— Allison Siegenthaler '07

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