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The Student News Site of Palo Alto High School

The Paly Voice

The Student News Site of Palo Alto High School

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Hipnotik dance charms revelers

The first annual Hipnotik dance, held at the Mitchell Park Community Center on Friday, wowed the crowd for four hours between 8 p.m. and 12 a.m.

“I think it went pretty well overall,” Hipnotik club co-president senior Teja Kondapalli said. “Our DJ was awesome, the lights were awesome. Lots of people were bringing friends to the dance and had a good time.”

According to Kondapalli, the dance attracted over 150 people.

“We had around 60 people who bought tickets at the door,” Kondapalli
said. “Another 90 people bought their tickets before the dance.”

The Hipnotik dance featured a selection of hip-hop and techno music,
including songs by 50 Cent, The Frontline, Darude, and other
artists. The Hipnotik club converted the main hall of the community center into a dance floor, complete with strobe lights, laser lights, fog generators, a disco ball, and free glow sticks for the party-goers.

The Hipnotik club members performed for the attendees at 10:30 p.m. A freeform break dance followed the Hipnotik routine. The whole performance, and a prize raffle, lasted for about 20 minutes.

“The Hipnotik performance was pretty good,” said junior Keish Nishijima. “But they didn’t do it for long enough.”

According to Kondapalli, the Hipnotik club deliberately made their
performance short to provide time for the break-dancers to perform.

The Hipnotik dance suffered from minor confusion at the beginning when several people left the dance, unaware that they could not return. The posted rules, including no outside food or drink, no gum, and no drugs or alcohol, made no mention of the no-return policy.

“We want to prevent any introduction of alcohol and drugs [into the
dance],” said club advisor Maya Escudero. “People aren’t allowed beyond the red carpet if they want to come back.”

Students who attended other non-school dances approved of the "no drugs" policy.

“I’ve been at dances at people’s houses, where they didn’t have rules,” junior Rale Huggz said. “If people wanted to do drugs they could. The drugs didn’t help the dances at all.”

The Hipnotik club hired private security guards to help enforce the
rules at the dance.

“We’re here to make sure there’s no drugs, alcohol, fights, or any
other problems,” security guard Glenn Nielson said. “We’d rather be safe than sorry.”

No recorded incidents occurred at the Hipnotik dance.

“It was really surprising,” Kondapalli said. “No people were kicked
out, and even if people were drunk it was hard to tell.”

The Hipnotik club went to great lengths to organize the dance.

“The idea came up last year, but we never did it,” Kondapalli said. “We decided to start off the new school year with [the dance]. We did planning over the summer, but we weren’t sure if there was a football game today, which there was.”

Several Hipnotik club members passed out flyers at Gunn High School and Los Altos High School before the dance.

“There were two people from Hipnotik passing out flyers at Gunn
yesterday,” Gunn freshman Matt Josp said. “We [Josp and Gunn freshman Michael Gilbert] heard about it and bought tickets at the door.”

According to Kondapalli, the organizers of this year’s Hipnotik dance were mainly seniors.

“If people continue to organize it, it should keep happening [every
year],” Kondapalli said.

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