Isabelle Chiu
Sports Editor
Mira Costa’s dance team became two time national champions on Saturday at the SHARP International Las Vegas Nationals.
The Mustangs placed first in two of their varsity main group dances in lyrical and jazz, and placed second in their hip hop dance. JV placed second in their jazz and lyrical dances. Individual team captains also performed solos, which were judged by technicality. The team’s overall point total gave it the win.
Click here to see photos from the competition
“Even though we got second place in hip hop, I think we all went full out for it,” junior Sage Gill said.”It was really fun because we had all of our energy for it because we weren’t tired out from previous dances. I think we tried our absolute hardest at that dance and I’m sad we didn’t get first, but we worked pretty hard.”
The team performed its hip hop routine to a mix of Missy Elliott songs while the jazz routine was performed to “Yellow Flicker Beat” by Lorde. Dancers performed their lyrical routine to the song “Stone Cold” by Demi Lovato. Sophomore Flo Platt won best turns, sophomore Joie Culligan won best leaps and senior captain Emily Duong won best kicks.
“Out of all of our group dances, lyrical best represents our talent,” Gill said. “There is is much emotion in it and since we’ve all practiced it so many times, we all have that emotion and put it in there, and it ended up looking beautiful.”
Duong placed first in her jazz solo to “Lose My Breath” by Destiny’s Child. Benson placed third in her lyrical solo to the song “Tragedy” by Brandi Carlile. The small hip hop group placed first, and the combined captains jazz group consisting of Duong, Benson, junior Shelby Friedman and senior Emma Sven danced to Marina Gasolina and placed first.
“I enjoy performing my solo because I have the chance to entertain the audience and the judges by myself while showing off my technique and different tricks,” Duong said. “It is different from the group dances, I do not have my teammates around to motivate me during practices or to rely on during the performance.”
The dance team placed first at nationals last year, and were looking to make a repeat performance this year. This year the varsity team is almost twice as large as last year’s, which took more work to make everything look clean and competition-ready, Benson said. Additionally, a few girls became ill from food poisoning the night before nationals, which led to adjustments on the day of the competition.
Read: Mira Costa’s dance team’s performance at nationals last year
“I have really enjoyed nationals both years,” junior Mackensie Banchik said. “Our team is more than twice the size of last year’s, so it was definitely more hectic, but we pulled it all off in the end and had a lot of fun in the process.”
To prepare for the competition season, the dance team started learning their competition dances in November and practiced for over two hours, three days a week to perfect each group dance. Gill said the most effective way to practice was to split up into smaller groups, watch groups dance and give feedback of what could be improved on.
“I’m really proud of the team and how well we’ve done this year,” Gill said. “I think we’ve worked really hard to get here. It became a lot harder because there’s so many people on the team but it all worked out and we did amazing.”
Click here: Read about the dance team’s first competiton of the season
Judges scored routines based on choreography, technique, showmanship, costumes, precision, execution and overall appeal. Since the team performs in a school gym, it is important that they are the same distance apart because it is easy to tell when a dancer off, Benson said. Since the judges are right in front of the dancers, good formation is necessary as well.
“I loved doing the hip hop,” Gill said. “Even though I wasn’t the best at it, it was super fun. It’s my favorite dance and its energizing, fun and exciting to do. It prepares for the excitement of competition.”
Although Costa’s competition season is complete, dancers will continue practicing on their own time to defend their two consecutive national titles.
“[In addition to placing first at nationals again], next year I think we should work on being as bonded as possible by working together fully as a team so the dances complement the team,” Gill said.
Leave a Reply