The buzz of excitement and commotion of eager classmates greets freshman Sophie Chen at the door as she enters the gym, ready to teach her peers a new piece of choreography for the class of 2028’s Homecoming skit dance. Meeting several times a week during lunch at the gym or fieldhouse, Chen says the skit dance rehearsals have become a forum for participants to socialize and get to know each other while working towards an achievement for their class.
While preparing for their first-ever skit dance, Chen says the dancers for the Class of 2028 have created a positive environment through encouragement and collaboration, with practices led by Chen along with her co-choreographer, freshman Rashika Jain. As a member of the MV Dance Team, Chen understands the connection that dance fosters firsthand and witnesses friendships blossoming during the skit dance practices.
“Especially since Kennedy Middle School and Lawson Middle School kids are together now, seeing how they interact with each other gives them an opportunity to unify in one place during lunch and have fun,” Chen said. “They’re having a great time and I think they’re getting closer as well, especially when they ask each other about dance moves instead of just the choreographers.”
The value of building a strong community within dance is something MVDT coach Joy Lee also emphasizes. She says while she has only recently started coaching the team last year, she says she has seen their hard work pay off during the Homecoming performances of the past and has enjoyed seeing them apply their skills to other parts of their lives.
“I love watching the skits every year, especially because a lot of the dance team kids get really involved in it,” Lee said. “It’s something that I celebrate and encourage everyone to participate in because it’s a great mix of school spirit and dance techniques perfectly put together.”
As both a dancer and a class officer, Chen is familiar with creating a balance between the art of dance and school spirit. Although this is her first year on MVDT, Chen had her first experience with choreographing when she was in Leadership at Kennedy Middle School. She remembered it as a positive experience and used the skills she honed to help her choreograph this year’s freshman skit dance.
The choreographers in each grade put a lot of time and effort into coming up with the moves and soundtrack for the dances themselves, Lee explains. The process of choreographing looks different for each dancer, but the overall procedure is the same.
“I think a good way to start is to improv, which means to turn on your music and start moving in a way that feels like it lines up with the music,” Lee said. “And then it will build into a phrase, like maybe three eight-counts of something.”
From there, Chen says if the dance is for a large group of people, the choreographer will teach the group the moves to see how the formations look and workshops the dance from there.
“We found lots of hype and trending moves that would be very easy, uplifting and set a happy mood, so everyone would be glad to come to our practices and learn,” Chen said. “More and more people started slowly coming to our practices, and it became a big hit.”
However, although there are familiar moves present, for inexperienced dancers like junior Rocco Ling, the more complicated moves within the choreography bring an extra layer of stress into dance preparation.
“Some dances have simple choreography, so it’s pretty easy for us to pick up, but for others it’s harder,” Ling said. “It’s trickier for people who are inexperienced, like me, and although I’m trying to pick it up, it’s very fast paced.”
While teaching hype moves is a struggle, senior Lotus Wu faced a different problem of finding hyped dancers. As a current captain of MVDT and skit dance choreographer for the past two years, Wu felt compelled to do it again for the last time but has been struggling to get the dancers to dedicate themselves to the matter.
“It’s senior year, so I’m telling everyone, last one, best one, right?” said Wu. “We should try to make it as good as we can, because we’re gonna be leaving soon. So it’s really frustrating, because the people who are choreographing the dances put so much time and effort into it, and unfortunately that’s not being portrayed.”
The struggles Wu encountered this year aren’t limited to her class, as the juniors have also had issues with participation in the past couple of years. Ling, who is taking part in the boys and co-ed dances, explains that only five or six junior boys are currently dancing alongside him, and in prior years there hasn’t been a boys dance at all.
“Now that we’ve gotten used to the environment here, we’re more willing to step out of our comfort zones and participate in the dance,” Ling said. “Even so, people still aren’t very enthusiastic, which is why our choreographers have to try and entice people to come in and stay a little longer rehearsing.”
As participation continues to be a challenge, Ling believes these issues have the potential to change the final product of the dance, but only if the choreographers let it. Lack of commitment can hinder their progress, Wu explains, but she and the other choreographers don’t let it compromise the execution of their vision.
“It’s difficult to finalize formations since every practice, the number of dancers changes, and I’m under a lot of pressure since I’ve been doing it every year since freshman year,” Wu said. “But I think we can pull it through, and I feel like we can finish everything that we wanted to.”
Despite the unexpected challenges, the dancers and the choreographers remain hopeful that they can execute the plans. While Ling, Chen and Wu face different struggles, they all agree that the end result is always worthwhile. Lee explains that even though creating dances can prove to be stressful for some, the moves themselves aren’t the most important part — the experience and feeling are.
“I always tell my dancers that you’re never gonna remember the steps to every single routine you’ve ever done,” Lee said. “But you will always remember how your audience reacted and how you felt afterwards.”
