By Kathryn Cross
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa Marching Band “caJOELed” its way into the Costa spotlight through R&B, pop and Bollywood rhythms by winning the dance team’s annual Lip Sync competition.
The Mira Costa dance team hosted its annual Lip Sync fundraiser on Jan. 7. The Mira Costa Marching Band won first place, Advanced Drama took second place and junior Rachel Kay, junior Julia Sheth and senior Kalena Tamura placed third.
“It felt amazing to win,” senior Scott Miketa said. “All 27 of us put in a lot of effort in order to put on a show, and we felt that it really paid off.”
This year was Marching Band’s first year participating in the Lip Sync, and to prepare, Miketa assembled various segments of different songs into Garageband and then choreographed the dance, despite having no prior dance experience. The performance featured segments from songs, including “Donatella” by Lady Gaga and “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
“Coming up with the songs for our show was really exciting and fun for me,” Miketa said. “I picked performers that I thought would highlight the message or artist of the song best and gave them a little feature in the show. My favorite part was seeing everyone break out of their shell and take a chance with dancing.”
The second-place winner featured 19 performers from the Advanced Drama class performing “Flawless” by Beyoncé. The performance was choreographed by senior Ryan Fiene, who has 13 years of dance experience.
“The choreography just came from my head and from listening to the music over and over again,” Fiene said. “I work closely with one of Beyoncé’s choreographers, so I already had an idea of how she moves, and then I looked at her videos for inspiration.”
Like Fiene, third-place winners Kay, Sheth, and Tamura each had 13 to 14 years of dance experience and choreographed their dance collaboratively. The trio performed a hip-hop routine to “Partition” by Beyoncé.
“The choreography included moves that we pulled from our dance experience,” Kay said. “There are a lot of moves in our bodies at this point and for the French portion of the song, we looked at a video of professional choreographer Bobby Newberry’s ‘Partition’ dance.”
Dance team alumni Alex Fuesterer and Costa staff members Ian Drummond, John Shaw, Keshia Fields and Valerie Park judged the contestants. According to Park, Marching Band’s performance was cutting-edge and very in-sync, and that’s why it walked away with first place.
“Their coordination, unity and amount of energy stood out to me,” Park said. “It was great to see a new group perform this year and have so much enthusiasm.”
Lip Sync and all of its performers faced many different setbacks after having the event pushed from its original date of Nov. 19 to Jan. 7 due to the two-day cancellation of classes at Mira Costa. Nonetheless, the Lip Sync was a success according to senior dance team member Quinn Gardner as well as Feuster.
“Overall, the performers were great,” Fuesterer said. “It was awesome to see so many groups at Costa come together and participate in Lip Sync.”
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