By Simone Archer-Krauss
This past Saturday, March 7th, Roosevelt’s competitive hip-hop dance team competed in the Sea-King District competition at Redmond High School.
They had a very successful competition, taking 1st place in their combined category and qualified for the WIAA state competition in about a week and a half, in Yakima. Every dance competition consists of a competition portion where each team preforms a piece that is under three minutes, after that there are drill downs, and then the awards ceremony. Drill downs are a military-esque style where a judge calls commands for the participants to follow. If one messes up then one is out. Dance competitions consist of six different styles of dance: hip-hop, pom, military, dance, show and kick. The pom style has pom-poms and is based loosely on cheerleading. Military is a very exact form of competitive dancing where teams have to almost robot like and complete crazy sets of headstands. Dance, also known as contemporary, is a mix between modern and ballet. Kick is chock full of kick lines and canons of splits. Hip-hop is a hard-hitting often angry or aggressive style of dance. It tends to stand out from the other genres because of its flexibility. Show is the most impressive of all. There is a whole set for each one, consisting of painted panels and props. For districts, Roosevelt’s team was combined with the dance and kick categories.
Competitions are known for their elaborate costumes, mostly made out of spandex. Some of the most memorable dances this year include TMNT, Power Rangers, and Cheshire cats.
The schools that are farther out of the city tend to do better at competitions because they have more dancers on their teams and tend to put much more focus and money into their teams. Competitions typically last all day with teams meeting up as early as 7am, in Roosevelt’s case, and not leaving until the competition is over, around 6:30 or 7pm.
Teams typically compete at 4 competitions before they head into post-season, if they score the minimum points. In order to qualify for districts a team has to score above 190 at two competitions. At districts the teams have one chance to score 210 in order to qualify for state. During their regular season, Roosevelt placed at every competition they attended, taking home three third place trophies and one second. You can check out the trophies in the second floor trophy cases near the entrance to the balcony, across from room 218.
