Entertainers gathered Friday night to share their talents with a packed audience in the University Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The Black Student Union sponsored the display of talent which included performers brought in from Chicago, Eastern students and acts from the local Teen Reach Program.

Four 11- and 12-year-old girls from Teen Reach danced to Destiny’s Child’s “Bug-a-Boo.”

Millicent Abernathy, a member of the group, mentioned that her group had performed in talent shows before, but never in front of college students.

The show was hosted by two men who are part of the group, “Triple Team.” They kept the crowd pumped up and the show rolling with their animated real poetry.

Other acts included poems with a beat, two hip-hop performers and dance groups. A total of twelve acts performed and more than half of the performers were from Eastern.

Courtney Johnson, a graduate family and consumer science student, was one of the student performers of the evening. Johnson sang “Open my Heart,” a contemporary gospel song by Yolanda Adams.

The variety show was intended to provide an opportunity for all students to showcase their talents. The BSU contacted Recognized Student Organizations on campus in an effort to get a deep pool of talent, said Elexis Autry, BSU president.

The goal of the variety show was to “provide a diverse event and bring a lot of people out,” Autry said. “We (BSU) were very pleased with the amount of people that came out for the event; we did not expect that many people.”

Friday’s variety show was the first the BSU has ever hosted, but the group plans to make it an annual event. Next year, the BSU plans to make even more of an attempt to personally contact the RSOs and attract a larger, more diverse group of performers, said Autry.