Video: Images from a century of CMU's Beaux Arts Ball with narration provided by Nikki Delhomme, a 22-year-old senior from Texas who is studying costume design. View the show in Windows Media or Quicktime format. Video may take several minutes to download over a dial-up connection. Click photo to view Windows format video. Media Player Toolkit Get Windows Media player Get the Apple QuickTime player

In its early years, the Beaux Arts Ball at Carnegie Mellon University exuded ambition, what with the dean himself dressed as Charlemagne, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Then again, would you expect anything less imaginative from a school whose artistic alumni include Steven Bochco, Ted Danson, Josh Groban, Cherry Jones, Rob Marshall, Andy Warhol and Patrick Wilson?

The College of Fine Arts, where students study architecture, art, design, drama and music, was founded in 1906 as the School of Applied Design. Such carved-in-stone fact pales beside the lushly costumed history of this bash, which, at times, was so bacchanalian that one reveler said it would have made Caligula blush.

Last held in 1993, the ball has been revived this year as a centennial celebration for the College of Fine Arts. More than 500 tickets have been sold to students, faculty, staff and alumni. Costumes inspired by light and shadow will dominate this Saturday's festivities in the college's four-story building.

As always, prizes will be awarded -- this year, for the most gorgeous, the most audacious, the flashiest and the most lighthearted costumes. There also is a prize for shadiest character and a special award for group enterprise. In past years, winners received a case of champagne.

Eric Sloss, a spokesman for the College of Fine Arts, said gift certificates may be among the prizes.

After the last ball in 1993, interest in the event waned. This year, the Beaux Arts Ball will limit the number of drinks partygoers consume. The party, which in years past, used the entire building, will be confined to the Great Hall on the first floor and the mezzanine. Alcohol will be served only on the building's mezzanine.

Dean Hilary Robinson, who arrived at CMU last September and will judge the costumes, said alumni have responded enthusiastically.

	Carnegie Mellon University Archives During the 1923 ball, called "Kapers at Karnak," Marian Vero dressed as Queen Nefertiti and her date, Karl Boromaeus Weber, as Ramses II. The students won the couple prize, a pair of silver plated loving cups. They later married. Click photo for larger image.

"Some people have given donations to help the ball happen," Robinson said, adding that one woman wrote and requested a poster promoting this year's ball because she met her husband at a Beaux Arts Ball 25 years ago.

"She wanted the poster for this year's ball as an anniversary present. Isn't that sweet?" Robinson said.

The revival would please Henry Hornbostel, the College of Fine Arts' first dean, whose architectural works are the basis for a current class by adjunct assistant professor Charles Rosenblum.

Hornbostel, a masterful architect and charming teacher, attended a Beaux Arts Ball, which is a tradition at architecture schools, while studying at L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. So, in 1914, he got the party started here with the first ball, called "Oriental Festival." A year later, he presided over the Court of Charlemagne.

"They were the best parties I think I've ever been to because of a combination of provocative costumes, unusual decorations, great dancing and just let-it-all-out-frivolity," said Doug Cooper, professor of architecture and a 1966 CMU graduate.

At a black and white ball in 1979, Cooper said, a dozen revelers dressed as black chess set pieces.

"Every 45 minutes or so, they would muster at one end of the great hall and march in a phalanx with the military sense that a chess set embodies, like one of Caesar's armies driving forward," Cooper said.

The team involved in the march toward this year's festivities includes Nikki Delhomme, a 22-year-old senior from Texas who is studying costume design. Her professor, Dick Block, tapped her and other students to organize lighting, sound, entertainment, catering and promotion.

"This is the first time in a long time that this ball has been held. None of us knew about it," Delhomme said, adding that there will be explosions of light and projections of images onto walls as well as the classical statues that line the college's long, grand foyer.

Partygoers can visit the 02 Zone Oxygen Bar and dance to music by Modey Lemon, Centipede E'est, the Billy Price Band and CelloFourte. Two classic silent films, "Metropolis" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," will be screened, and there will be cabaret and ballet performances, too. Finger foods and breakfast will be served.

Creating an other-worldly atmosphere traces back to the ball's early years, when students transformed the fine arts building into Arabia, Olympus, Egypt or Bohemian Slovakia. Themes ranged from "One Arabian Night" to "Frolic of the Vanities."

In 1923, during "Kapers at Karnak," Karl Boromaeus Weber dressed as Ramses II while his date, Marian E. Vero, came as Queen Nefertiti. They won the couple prize, a pair of silver-plated loving cups, and later married.

"For that year, you would study Egyptian art, architecture and design," said Jennie Benford, the CMU archivist who prepared an exhibition on the ball, which was initially part of the college's curriculum.

	Carnegie Mellon University Archives Olga "Volga" Weigl at "Revel of the Russians" in 1927. Click photo for larger image.

At "Revel of the Russians" in 1927, Olga "Volga" Weigl, an exchange student from Budapest, won first prize for her elaborately embroidered Hungarian costume. "Revel" resulted in damage to the fine arts building, so CMU turned down the volume on the event.

"As far as this being part of the curriculum, 'Revel of the Russians' was the last one," Benford said. "The school said, 'We're not changing the test times to accommodate set-up for the Beaux Arts Ball. You get no course credit. We're not responsible for this. Here's some money. You do it.' "

One participant in "Revel of the Russians" appeared as Lenin, which some administrators "looked upon as poor taste," Benford added.

At another memorable ball in 1985, alcohol flowed faster than a flooding Pennsylvania creek during a spring rain when 1,300 students crowded the building. Afterward, estimates of damage done by revelers ranged from $15,000 to $50,000.

Five years passed before the first and only alcohol-free ball in recent memory, called "Risorgimento" was held on Feb. 10, 1990.

Here's how The Tartan, CMU's campus newspaper, assessed that evening: "Nobody got trampled, several giddy couples were observed getting 'squished-up' in rooms on the upper floors, but they weren't in need of the paramedics. No bodies thrown from the fourth floor, no naked LSD fiends jumping through glass doors, no gunfights, nothing. What a disappointment!"

Lowery Burgess, a CMU professor of art who was responsible for the alcohol-free ball, laughed at that rueful description and recalled his favorite costume of the evening:

"It was just after the Berlin Wall collapsed. The architecture students came as pieces of the Berlin Wall. Each person was a piece. They made the wall of cardboard and had German graffiti and barbed wire on top, and some of those lights you see in prisons. They'd all get together to make the wall again and break apart."

The next ball, in 1993, was "Nocturna Tempora." Unlike the earliest balls, which were restricted to fine arts students, all students were invited to boogie to music by 17 bands, gamble in a casino, eat and imbibe.

One alumnus who will attend this year's ball is Dan Garber, a San Francisco architect who encountered stiff resistance from administrators and faculty when he and a cadre of classmates suggested reviving the ball in 1979. A bad aftertaste lingered from a ball in the late 1960s that had run amok.

But the 1979 ball turned out to be an unqualified success that began at 10 p.m. and attracted 1,200 people who drank, danced, ate breakfast at 3 a.m., then left around 6 a.m. on Sunday. The evening also raised $2,000 toward the purchase of library books.

As Garber and other members of the garbage committee began cleaning up, they propped open the vast building's doors and watched the most ethereal participants make their exit.

"The place was all heated up. The sun was just coming up. The morning was very misty. We had filled up the barrel vault ceiling in the College of Fine Arts with black and white helium balloons. Cool air came in and an inversion was created. The balloons slowly fell from the ceiling to the floor and rolled out the doors. It was a very Fellini-esque moment on this abandoned campus on this milky, misty morning. It was a lovely, lovely image."

	Lynn Johnson, Post-Gazette Archives Revelers dressed as a dragon dance through the crowd at the 1981 Beaux Arts Ball. Click photo for larger image