Dorinda Thomas

Irvin and his friends had long intended to pay homage to the Cheetah Girls, and they finally decided to do so for Disney DJ Night in January 2020. The choices were pretty obvious of who would be which Cheetah Girl: as the dancer, Irvin called dibs on Dorinda. Gigi was Galleria, Rena was Chanel, and Angelica was Aqua.

Surprisingly enough, the costume item that gave Irvin the most trouble was the headband - in the end, he had to sew it himself. The rest of the costume came together through diligent use of thrift stores and online shopping.

Their group received cheers as soon as they arrived outside the venue - it was clear that there was still a lot of affection for the Cheetah Girls! They helped kick off the party by going on stage to sing and dance to "Amigas Cheetahs" - Irvin even tried to learn some of the choreography for the number. They did the same later on for "Cinderella" and "Cheetah Sisters." It was, in a word, cheetahlicious!

One of Irvin's projects during the covid-19 pandemic was learning the choreography of some iconic Disney Channel numbers, including two from The Cheetah Girls 2. The first number he learned was the opener, "The Party's Just Begun." So on sunny weekend, he met up with friends to film another dance project, and then changed into a Dorinda costume to film the dance number. This time, the costume was evoking the outfit from Cheetah Girls 2 that was a mixture of cheetah print and denim, so luckily Irvin already had all this in his closet. Here is the resulting video: