All Things Must Pass. But the Prom, Somehow, Goes On.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/nyregion/all-things-must-pass-but-the-prom-somehow-goes-on.html

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Ever since Life magazine photographed a marathon prom at Mariemont High School near Cincinnati in 1958, proms have been a staple of American photojournalism, visual check-ins on the dreams, egos, libidos, fashions and sometimes the segregated realities of the nation’s youth, dressed to the nines and up all night to get lucky, or just to have fun.

Hard to believe the things still exist, really.

The prom at Raymond C. Cramer Secondary School in Goshen, N.Y., 50 miles north of the city, puts its own spin on those traditions. The students — just 120, from four grades — commute from several surrounding counties, and few have drivers’ licenses, so their social interactions, including dating, are largely confined to the school day, or through social media. Romance, here, typically yields to distance.

Prom is not a night for couples.

“We have a few, but it’s really about your friends,” said Melody Geroux, a math teacher and prom chairwoman at the school, where she has taught since 1995. Students arrived solo, with their parents, and then connected with friends inside.

Boys danced in groups of boys; girls with girls. Intoxicants? Nowhere to be seen, said Allyse Pulliam, the photographer, who said she was drawn to the prom by the sheer joy of it. “It felt more pure” than her own four high school proms, she said. “I cried like three times.”

For prom season, a classroom became a free boutique of clothes donated by the community, altered for free by a former social worker at the school. Staff members dug into their own pockets to have the clothes dry cleaned.

Teachers: sigh.

But what a night. Le-Quan Williamson, voted prom king, posed for photos with every schoolmate who asked, and wore his prom king sash to school the following Monday. Diana Monello, the prom queen, beamed majestically. Let’s talk regal.

The lights dimmed, the D.J. pumped the dance tunes. Ask not for whom “The Cha Cha Slide” spins; it spins for thee.

Students who found the loud music tiring or overstimulating took time out in the quiet area, and parents waited in the smaller cafeteria at the other end of the school.

The small school offers soccer, basketball, track, bowling and a senior class trip to a Broadway show (this year, “King Kong”), but nothing is as big as the prom, except maybe the alumni dance the next night, which drew nearly twice as many attendees.

The greatest American song about going to a dance, the Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance for Me,” was written by Doc Pomus, who required crutches or a wheelchair because of childhood polio. It’s a wrenching ballad about imagining his love on the dance floor while he cannot join in.

At Cramer, where the students have developmental disabilities, they get to enjoy all the dances.

“People say, Wow, they’re having a prom,” Ms. Geroux said. “Of course they are. They’re teenagers.”