by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Okay, settle down, class. Sure, you’re excited, the weekend’s almost here, and with it, your big high-school dance. But we still have studying to do, and the topic is—look at that, it’s Nostalgia: the High School Dance Simulation.

“This is the fourth one, if we take into consideration the first, which was just in a bar with a couple of friends. It was fun, but it wasn’t the actual event,” says Thierry Lavigne, the mostly one-man operation behind Drunken Midget Productions, former rave-makers and now creators of asorted theme events.

“The first Nostalgia was at SAT a couple of years ago. It’s basically a high-school dance simulation. People dress up as schoolboys and schoolgirls. They’re given name tags to write whatever they want on—people love that. There’s a principal on stage, there’s ’90s dance music playing, there’s a bunch of prizes that we give away.”

Correction: the “principal,” P. Herr Fawlter, won’t be physically present this time. The actor who always plays him, Pierre Fauteux, is shooting a movie and unavailable—“But I’m filming him in a principal’s office,” says Lavigne, “so he’ll appear on giant screens during intermissions and start yelling at people. Also, I got one of those kid’s desks and rigged it with LEDs to spell out Nostalgia—it’s pretty cool. I also have some basketball hoops, so it’ll look like a high-school gymnasium.”

Yeah, but will it sound like a gym? “I’ve got 10,000 watts of sound, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

The musical cornerstone this time is a live set from Toronto’s answer to ’90s Eurodisco, the Boomtang Boys. “They’re gonna play all their classics, like ‘Popcorn’ and ‘Squeeze Toy.’ Normally, I would just get DJs, but I wanted to make it bigger. The Boomtang Boys are a good choice—they’re fairly known, and I’m sure it’ll be a good show because they’ll have a singer and everything. They’re still involved in music, but not as the Boomtang Boys, really—they produce music for TV and don’t really do shows anymore. So it’s a comeback, a Nostalgia special.”

Now, class, don’t forget—the dance has a dress code, so school uniforms, prom dresses and cheerleading gear are pretty mandatory. “I’d say 90 per cent of the people do it,” says Lavigne of dress-code observance, “and you know what? It’s also about 90 per cent girls who show up, all dressed as schoolgirls, so I’m kinda enjoying that part!”

With Boomtang Boys, DJ Flavio, Mr. Vain and VJ Homing at Fractal Art Centre on Saturday, June 10, 10 p.m., $15

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