THREE out of the top 20 dancers are alumni or current members of the dance team community I couldn't be prouder to be a part of.
Ricky Ubeda from Miami was a member of Coral Reef High School's JV and Varsity Cudettes from 2010-2014. Carly Blaney is entering her third year on Arizona State University's Spirit Squad and Jacque LeWarne was a member of the Dowling Catholic High School Dance Team from 2010-2014 and is now an incoming freshman on the Iowa State University Dance Team.
Ricky attended Miami UDA camps, the UDA Florida Regional and UDA Nationals (NDTC) from the years 2010-2014. Carly has been to the collegiate UDA camp for the past 2 years in Santa Barbara. She has also attended UDA collegiate nationals for the past 2 years and also attended the ICU dance worlds in 2013.
In 2011, Jacque attended the UDA Elite Camp in Altoona, Iowa. In 2012 and 2013, her high school team competed at the UDA Spirit of America Championship at the Mall of America. And in 2014, they competed at the UDA Chicagoland Dance Championship. For ISU, she will attend NDA camps and competitions like the NDA College Camp and NCA/NDA College Nationals in Daytona Beach in April 2015. (Varsity.Com, Julie Henderson)
Often times, the "dance team world" is considered separated from "studio world." However, as both a high school and college dance team member, studio and competitive dancer, and current dance major I have found that to be false. Just as different styles, genres, teaching methods, and studio settings fit under the vast umbrella of dance, so does school dance team training.
Just as in the studio, dance team training focuses on perfecting technical execution, enhancing the dynamics of a group performance as well as each individual's perspective, translating an idea to an audience, and gaining the discipline to work seamlessly as a unit.
In an article on varsity.com by Julie Henderson, Ricky Ubeda says "Dance team has impacted my dance career in multiple ways. Dance can sometimes be an isolated art form, and dance team really helped me become part of a unit. Something bigger. It taught me how important details are. It taught me how to have spacial awareness. And gave me the opportunity to practice leadership in a nurturing environment."
In my own experience with the Crimson Cabaret Dance Team at the University of Alabama, I can see how true Ubeda's response is to how dance team impacted his dance career. His use of the word "aware" seems to perfectly sum up what I feel I have learned by being on a dance team and participating in UDA training camps.
Through my participation on a dance team, I began to have a heightened awareness of my own technical strengths and shortcomings, awareness of how I take up space on the floor, awareness of transitions, awareness of body alignment, awareness of my audience, awareness of my presentation, awareness of dynamics and stylistic choices, and awareness of every last detail from where my arms are placed in a turns in second combination down to the color of my lipstick or the part in my hair.
I feel as if the awareness learned from dance team is exactly what I needed to enhance my dance training and take my performance to the next level. To paraphrase Ricky Ubeda, dance is not an isolated art, it is an art that can be shared amongst a large group of people. With one voice, a message can be heard; but with a group of voices toned, tuned, and timed to exact precision, that message can reach farther and wider than ever before.