BREAKING: Caius announces May Ball theme

Caius May Ball Committee has announced that this year’s May Ball theme will be “Praeternaturalia: An Electric Evolution”.

The term, in Latin, roughly means “things that are beyond that which is natural”, presumably chosen to suggest that there will be something unusual or special about the Ball. We don’t know quite what, but watch this space.

The Ball’s website.

It was announced on Saturday evening at the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.

Caius holds its May Ball every two years. The theme of the last one, in 2014, was “A Brief History of Time”. This Ball featured a planetarium and was announced by Caius fellow Stephen Hawking.

The Ball will be happening on the Tuesday of May Week.

A committee member for the Ball told TCS: “‘The Praeternatural’ literally means something differing from or surpassing what is natural … We will create a lavish natural environment with a technological twist.”

A member of the creative team said he was “excited at the prospect of nature and technology forming a symbiotic relationship”.

“Surfeit”: Clearly someone’s an English student.

The Ball’s organising team wasn’t afraid to show off their slightly pretentious vocabulary: “We will be fusing natural abundance with digital art to create a juxtaposed environment.”

The website showed this year’s most impressive use of a tilde, describing the event as “this year’s can’t~miss May Ball”.

A Caius student, who was at the launch, said: “No one in the audience knew what it was so our master Alan Fersht had to explain it, then everyone was like oh, okay.

“He was okay though he took a minute and then let everyone settle down and then joked he was worried about our poor Latin skillage.

“But then everyone was in applause at the end so it was OK.

“Also, the word preternaturalia doesn’t roll off the tongue especially easily so that made it more confusing.“