Boys’ dance team goes solo at rally

April 4, 2018 — by Francesca Chu and Emilie Zhou

As students settled down during the April 6 rally, most were excited to watch the new boys’ dance team perform for the first time without the accompaniment of the girls’ team.

 

As students settled down during the April 6 rally, most were excited to watch the new boys’ dance team perform for the first time without the accompaniment of the girls’ team. Students moved around to try and get a better look at the boys’ performance as “Plain Jane” by A$AP Ferg started to play.

With the girls’ team in Los Angeles for nationals, it was up to the boys to perform a dance and promote school spirit at the rally — the dancers were pleased with the results.

“I think the rally was pretty successful considering the amount of time we had to put on the routine, ” senior co-captain Nicholas Di said.

Some members, such as junior Jason Ting, said their performance was not their best and would’ve been better if they had had more time to prepare. Additionally, the process of practicing and perfecting the dance was not as easy, especially with the coach of both dance teams, Kaitlyn Landeza, being out on maternity leave.

Feb. 15 was Landeza’s last day, and this left the boys’ dance team in an uncertain situation. With no adult in charge, the 12 members of the team were wondering whether or not they would continue to practice.

“The whole situation was a little confusing, since we weren’t able to find someone to replace our coach,” senior co-captain Nathan Kang said. “Also, with our coach being busy, we had taken a few weeks off, and many of us were unsure what the status of our team was.”

However, after February break, Kang and Di decided to take initiative to choreograph and lead regular practices again.

“We’re all excited for our coach and it’s unfortunate that she had to leave right now, but I think this team is important to everyone on it, so we thought why not lead practice ourselves,” Di said.

According to sophomore Ashvin Maheshwar and Ting, practices were a bit inefficient at first and many members had other time commitments. But besides these small problems, the change was pretty easy to adjust to as the team had already been mostly student-run with Landeza being there to oversee practices only.

However, with the end of the school year just around the corner, the future of the team is uncertain. The team is hoping to gather more interest and awareness since most of its current members are seniors, Ting said.

“In the future we hope to continue the team, and the only way that will happen is if we get enough interest,” Maheshwar said. “So if [anyone] is interested, try out next year!”

 
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