By Brittany Burke
The art of dance, to many, may be just that, an art. But for the fifteen girls on the Blue Devils dance team, dance is and will always be a sport.
Competing for the first time since last year, the CCSU dance team took second place in the Universal Dance Association’s New England competition.
Dancing against seven schools, the CCSU dancers waited apprehensively as the judges slowly announced the winners beginning with the eighth place team.
“We were sitting in a circle, with our shoes, because we had pretty cool sneakers on, with these shoes in the center, holding hands and they’re calling…eighth place to first,” said dance co-captain Laura Altieri. “They called eighth place, not us, so we grabbed tighter, seventh place, not us.”
“So they got to fourth place, and we thought we’d probably get fourth or fifth place maybe, they called fourth and it wasn’t us, they called third and it was Sacred Heart, and we like grabbed our hands and were like ‘oh my god’ we could’ve got first or second, and they called second place, Central Connecticut State, and we went nuts, we exploded. You would’ve thought we got first place, we were more excited than Westfield who got first,” said Altieri.
Less than two points separated the second place CCSU dance team and the first place winners, and hosts of the competition, Westfield State College from Massachusetts.
Out of a possible 100 points the dance team was given a score of 84 in the hip hop category. The UDA judges the dancers on overall effect (20 points), choreography (30 points), technique (25 points) and execution with (25 points).
The categories are then broken down further into subcategories such as communication and projection, which rates the dancer’s ability to evoke emotion out of the audience. Other subcategories include synchronization, creativity and difficulty.
The UDA is the first competition for the dance team since last year, after choosing not to compete, due to lack of success. Instead of competing in two separate categories, jazz and hip-hop, the dance team chose to focus solely on the latter, which proved to be successful.
“We were definitely not expecting to come that high, we were hoping to get first place….We only lost first place by a point and a half, and that’s almost out of 100 and we got 84.67 and they got 86.87 or something like that, so it was really close. I think we made one mistake that we didn’t make before,” Altieri said. “The adrenaline and everything might have had us make one mistake, but it feels like first to us so it doesn’t matter.”
Dance competitions are not the priority for the dance team, which dances at the CCSU football and basketball home games, while traveling to a select few matchups. The team has 15 routines to learn per season, which takes up the majority of team’s practice time.
“We weren’t really that kind of team, we were more about the games and supporting the athletics and everything, but when we did it none of us thought we would really get excited and lose it, but it was exciting,” said Altieri.
The dance team can be found practicing in Kaiser four days a week, twice in the actual dance studio and twice in the Kaiser lobby.
While competing isn’t exactly the norm for the team, the unsuspected success found last weekend in Westfield may not be the last.
“I think the biggest factor that made us get so far was we’re really close; there’s no drama. Every team there’s drama, but we’re a really close team and that’s one of our priorities, just to keep it fun and have a good time, which is why I think we work well together as a team,”Altieri said.