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Marky Mcdanel one of the dance team’s members started dancing at an early age when her mother saw an advertisement for a dance program at a local church. She claims her favorite part about being on the school’s team is the relationships. “The relationships are what make the dance team really worth it. The core of dancing on a team is having good relationships. If the girls don’t have good chemistry, the dance won’t ever “click” as good as it could. We have a great range of ages and personalities and it’s a great place to learn people skills, team skills and learning skills. I love getting to know all of the girls everyday I see them and knowing that I have a whole group of girls that I can trust and go to when I need them.”

A normal dance team practice starts after school. “After school, we have what’s called “study session.” It’s a 45 min period of time that we have to get homework done and get tutored help from teachers and peers. It’s very helpful. Then we head down to where we are practicing and stretch for a while and warm up and get to work. It depends on the time of the year for us, but we will either be learning a new routine or “cleaning” a routine. That means just taking out stuff we don’t like and replacing it and making the dance better. We will go over important information that we need to know and debrief and head home.” With the state competition coming up however, practices are becoming more intense and the anticipation is rising.” Marky states, “We have learned our routine and cleaned it a lot so that it is the best that it can be. We brought the dance to a competition a little bit ago to get some feedback that was very helpful in our cleaning process. We have done some conditioning and workouts to help with our endurance. We’ve also done a lot of mental preparation with envisioning what we want the dance to look like and be like at state.” A typical tryout for a school dance program is something most high school students will never see. Unlike other sporting events such as basketball or football, dance tryouts have practices before the tryouts so the girls can get a feel for the tryout routine and become comfortable with each other. “There are a few informational meetings for people to really know what dance is about. Then, we have a few “mock try-out” days before the actual try out. We do exactly what we would do at the try out as well as learning short routines for the try out, but it’s just practice so that everyone gets a feel for what it will be like so nerves won’t ruin any chances. We receive a sheet of requirements that we need to have to be on the team before hand. We are paired up and that’s how we try out. Everyone waits out in the hall and two people at a time go into the gym and do technique and perform a short routine that we learned during the few mock days.  We perform in front of usually 3 judges. After the physical part of the try out, we go through an interview process that is done individually. We’re just asked questions about dance and being on a team and the different sports that we perform at. We receive results either that day or the day after of who is on the team.”

Although Marky loves all types of dance she says her favorites are jazz and hip-hop. “I love hip hop and jazz. Both are pretty different from each other. Hip-hop requires musicality on a different level from other genres. For me, when I’m doing hip-hop, it’s easy to forget about anything that may be going on in my life since it takes so much focus. It’s intricate and really really fun! I love jazz mostly just because it’s fun and it can go to some really neat music.” A typical competition is something that would seem strange to sport fanatics. They usually begin with each team being assigned an area to practice and do last minute reviews and repair to their routine. Then the order of teams splits, alternating between cheer teams and dance teams. After every team has prepared there is a huge dance party where all the teams come together for a good time while the scores are being finalized. Some competitions will then have a smaller competition between the finalists and some will just announce the winners. Marky loves the competitions. “It’s absolutely madness” she states, “it’s amazing!”

The dance competition the team most recently competed at saw a dance from FRHS focused on 90’s hip hop and rap songs. With a mixture of new and rejuvenated dance moves that were popular in music videos from the 90’s. The team has previously preformed this dance at a competition and received feedback that has helped the girls better the piece and prepare for a win. Marky loves dance, but she loves to dance with her team even more. The FRHS dance team has one more competition for the year until they head into half time performances at the boy’s and girl’s varsity basketball games.