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Normally when you read in these pages about Jeff Arce, a partner at The MacNaughton Group, he’s not wearing KISS band-member makeup, but he will be Saturday night.
Sometimes, executives just want to have fun and girls just wanna rock and roll all night.
Oh, wait.
The song titles may be slightly mashed up, but a mix of all of the above is sure to amuse and entertain the capacity crowd at the fifth annual Child and Family Service fun-raising and fundraising event at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.
For this year’s show, titled "Kings & Queens of Rock ‘n’ Roll," CFS board members and other supporters have been in rehearsals for weeks for performances of music by Elvis Presley, Robert Palmer, Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett and the aforementioned KISS.
Arce gets to play the big tongue himself, Gene Simmons, while his band mates will be Tony Mizuno, a senior vice president at Bank of Hawaii, as Paul Stanley; Lance Mizumoto, Central Pacific Bank executive vice president and chief banking officer, as Ace Frehley; and Rich Wacker, president and CEO of American Savings Bank, as Peter Criss.
Wow. Will the band be in full leather?
"We try to keep our costumes a little bit of a surprise" for maximum effect when they take the stage, Arce said.
His participation in previous years has had him dress up in a black leather jacket, white T-shirt and jeans for a 1950s-themed event, circa-1970s "pimp" outfits, the Village People’s Native American in full headdress and a shirt "that made my abs look bigger and stronger," he said. Others also were colorfully costumed.
"The strangest year," he said, was when he and two other executives dressed up as the Supremes, meaning he and the guys were wearing full makeup from false eyelashes all the way down to toenail polish, and were dressed in tight-fitting evening gowns, "which led me to the discovery of what Spanx are," he said.
The reference caused choreographer Ellen Ostler to burst out laughing during our conference call. (Spanx is a brand of "shapewear" used to um, streamline one’s silhouette. Yeah, that’s it.)
Ostler is an executive assistant at The MacNaughton Group but also has been dancing since age 9 and owns Rhythmic Dance Infusion dance studio.
She and her partner teach ballroom dancing and social dancing, and enjoy teaching the performing executives what she calls "dance movement" as a volunteer for the annual shows.
"It’s not so much about real dancing, but movement, to create a fun, high-energy and humorous show so that it’s very entertaining for our guests," she said.
Sure, the executives are already up there to "make A," Arce said, so they could just wing it, but Ostler’s tutelage ensures that they don’t look chaotic.
The genesis of the event sprouted from the depths of the recession, said event chairwoman Kathy Inouye, chief operating officer of the Kobayashi Group.
While fundraising was desperately needed at that time, the usual costly ticket/sequined gown/rubber chicken gala seemed inappropriate, so Inouye thought about a "Happy Days"-themed event to take supporters back to a simpler time, encourage people to have fun and dress up in 1950s-style attire, and so on, she said.
The CFS Women’s Guild "never get(s) the credit, but they created the ambience that night," Inouye said.
The event was so successful it has been reprised with different themes in each of the past four years, raising more than $2 million in that time. The lead-up to this year’s event has exceeded the $600,000 goal by at least $20,000, last Inouye checked, she said Friday. It is sold out, and has been for about a month, Inouye said.
The more than two dozen executive good sports who will be hamming it up for charity include Carol Ai May, vice president of City Mill Co.; Keith Amemiya, senior vice president at Island Holdings Inc.; and Cathy Camp, director of development for Kamehameha Schools.
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On the Net:
» www.childandfamilyservice.org
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COURTESY THE MACNAUGHTON GROUP