Loading ...
Featuring a wide range of student-created pieces — from hip-hop and jazz to contemporary and lyrical — the Palo Alto High School Dance Team will host its annual Spring Dance Show at 7 p.m. Friday in the Performing Arts Center.
The dance showcase will feature performances from the Paly dance team, dance classes and clubs.
According to Dance Coach Alanna Williamson, the dance team will be performing seven pieces for the show. Five of the dances have been previously performed at half times and rallies this past year and two will be brand-new student-choreographed pieces.
Not all of the members on the dance team compete during the regular season, so Williamson said the spring showcase is a nice way to unite the team and reflect on the dances over the past year.
“It’s really nice to come back together with them at the end of the year and end the year really strong,” Williamson said. “It’s also cool to see all the dances again. It’s hard to remember them all.”
Dance Teacher Alyssa Bond said the dance showcase started around six years ago with performances from just the varsity dance team, but over the years have evolved into including the Paly dance classes and clubs.
“It’s a chance for the award-winning Paly Varsity Dance Team to show off their awesome routines, and we get to come in and have some fun doing performances of our own,” Bond said. “It’s just a good mix of the dance team and a few different styles from other clubs.”
According to senior captain Rachel Ho, the team increased practices in the weeks leading up to the performance in order to brush up on choreography from earlier in the year.
“We’ve been definitely ramping up practices,” Ho said. “After football and basketball season ended, we were really focusing on our comp[etition] routines. So now it’s interesting because we’re trying to recall all of our old routines because we’re gonna be performing our favorite halftimes from the year.”
The spring show also provided team members with the opportunity to choreograph a piece, which Ho said will be stylistically different from the halftime show dances.
“The piece we created is a little bit more contemporary because in our previous pieces for events like halftime shows, we really had to focus on making it entertaining and fitting the vibe of a sports game.” Ho said. “The officer team choreographed their own routine for the show, and we also gave some opportunities for the rest of the team members to choreograph a small part, which was really fun because we got to see a lot of individual styles.”
Williamson said a challenge of the show was the short period of time in which the team had to choreograph, rehearse and audition new members for the team.
“It’s the end of the year, we’re a little tired and everyone’s burnt out from school,” Williamson said. “We have a really strict and tight schedule for it, so it’s just like a little bit of pressure to get it all done.”
Bond said she is excited to witness the effort of the students reflected in the dances.
“I love seeing my students that I see on a weekly basis getting to showcase their skills and things they’ve been working on so hard in a space like the PAC, which is just absolutely beautiful,” Bond said. “A lot of students that are in my dance classes or dance clubs don’t necessarily perform outside of school, so this is their chance to do it on a stage.”
Tickets to the show are available for purchase here at $5 for Paly students and $10 for Adults.
