When I started high school, I auditioned for the dance team. I’ve only been on the team a year, but they’re already like a second family. As a team, we practice up to four hours every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and sometimes Fridays too. We’ve gone to many competitions, and performed lots of times together.
The first team event is Thunderbird dance camp. It’s a four day overnight camp, and we were split into twos to share rooms. My roommate was a junior, Taylor, and she was super nice. Halfway through camp we got into a prank war with the coaches, but more on that later.
My roommate and I
During the camp we learn two main routines, a novelty dance, the camp dance, and the hand dance. The camp is also a really good time to bond with your team, to get to know everyone better. I really opened up after camp, and I felt a lot more comfortable with all my teammates.
I didn’t have a T-shirt to use for the dance, so I had to use my coach’s. 🙂
My first routine was contemporary with Will. I really liked the dance, even though contemporary was still very new to me as a style. This dance had lots of floor work, and some big jumps. I really like big jumps, but I wasn’t really good at them at the time. When we performed the dance, we were told to wear a white or gray T-shirt over a black form-fitting tank top, because half-way through the routine we take the T-shirts off and drop them on our faces. And finish the dance holding the shirt in our mouths. It was definitely something I’ve never done before, but it was surprisingly fun.
My second dance was jazz with Tiff. The dance was really fast, and I wasn’t very confident with it. It was also supposed to be incredibly sassy, and I’m not good at those types of facial expressions. But the choreography itself was pretty fun.
I got to do the novelty routine with my roommate, and even though I didn’t really like the dance, I enjoyed dancing with her. Our theme was Birthday Party. We got to use strips of tissue paper during the dance, and we got cupcakes afterwards, so that was a bonus:).
The camp and hand dances were done as a whole camp, instead of the smaller groups for the other routines. I only got the camp dance the last few times we practiced it, and during the performance I only made minor mistakes.
The hand dance is done sitting on the floor, and it only uses the upper body. It’s done to a mashup of songs, which ends up merging into a funny story. This dance was super fun, and probably the easiest one to remember, and also to do.
Back to the prank war with the coaches: Taylor started it, and I got roped into it because we were rooming together. It all began when Taylor sprayed Coach Stephanie with water during lunch. Then Stephanie taped our dorm door shut while we were dancing. I got back to the dorm before Taylor did, and freaked out over the door. Stephanie stood a few feet away, laughing and videotaping the whole thing. To get back at her, Taylor and I put bananas in front of her door. Stephanie HATES bananas. When she saw them, she screamed, and started throwing them at us. Taylor ran into the dorm room and shut the door, leaving me trapped in the hall with Stephanie and her projectile bananas. Luckily none of them actually hit me:)