The dance team is only three years old and is a relatively new program in the community. Despite being a younger program, it has grown every year: gaining more members, learning different dances, and performing at various events.
“The program has developed a lot throughout the years. The first year was great. We started out with a couple of choreographies, and we also performed at three or four basketball games that year too,” head coach Jamie Minkus said. “The next year we were able to do three choreographies instead of two and we performed at over double the amount of basketball games we did last year.”
This is also the first year the team is participating in OSAA competitions, which is a big step for them. Although they compete as an exhibition team, they still make themselves known at the competitive level.
“We have more of a presence in the competitive OSAA world even though we are not coming in as a competitive team because of the prescriptions that are placed upon choreography, and we want to have a little more liberation and a little more freedom with what we choreograph and perform,” Minkus said.
As a newer program, the team has made expanding its program one of its main goals this year.
“One of our priorities is to spread the word about the team because I feel like not a lot of people know about the team right now,” team captain Lucia Romero said.
A big aspect of the dance team is expressing culture through dance. They perform a plethora of pieces to represent a variety of cultures.
“With the diversity on our team, we perform a lot of diverse pieces, with different types of choreography and expressing different cultures like Hispanic culture and Afrobeats,” Romero said.
Minkus also had a comment on expressing culture through dance.
“We’re expressing who we are, who we identify as, as a human. We are also cultivating a culture within the dance team, like a very familiar place, a place of emotional safety,” Minkus said.
Another interesting aspect of the dance team is the costumes they use for each performance. The costumes help further emphasize the energy the team is going for within their performance.
“Our costumes are another creative energy we get to express and discover through our journey with choreography,” Minkus said.
The dance team has seen a lot of growth over the past few years and things are definitely looking up for them. The team’s last performance for the season was on Feb. 15.
To find more information about the team, refer to the team’s Instagram.
