Competition

Hey!

So I'm going to try to pick up where I left off. In my last post I finished talking about what it takes to make a competitive college dance team and how the camp generally works. After camp and at the beginning of the school year is when the team starts working on the competition routine(s). For the Universal Dance Association national dance competition, each school team can only compete in two categories of dance and each routine can only be two minutes long.


Two minutes may seem like a long time for a dance routine, but there are a few things to take into consideration when one is actually choreographing a routine. There has to be various elements in each routine that displays strengths  in technique, execution, precision, and overall impression. These things are their own individual categories on the score sheet and are very important to a teams' success. Usually, the coach of the team choreographs the routine, but some coaches hire choreographers to come in and make a routine for them. An advantage of the coach choreographing the routine is that they really know what their team's potential is - they know their strengths and weaknesses. An advantage of an outside choreographer coming in to teach a routine is that it can be something different and challenging for the team; therefore, the team would work very hard to master this choreography and surpass the challenge.

My team routines were choreographed by  our coach, Rey Lozano. This past weekend our dance team had USA collegiate dance team nationals at the Anaheim Convention Center(this is the reason I have been so busy). We got second in jazz and second in hip hop and WE BEAT CAL STATE FULLERTON. This was a great victory for us, and I am personally very proud of our team for working so hard and doing so well at nationals.

Here is a video of the CSULB dance team jazz routine that was performed at UDA Nationals in Florida:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5s6cryIHnY

I'll be back tomorrow to recap more on competition stuff.
As always, feel free to ask questions!