What’s the distinction between dance crew and pom crew? Drill and majorette? Step, track, and coloration guard?
Every form of crew is present in excessive faculties all throughout the U.S. (and even past). However not each faculty has all types, and genres can differ based mostly on tradition and geography. There are additionally overlaps in parts like choreography, props, and venues, and “dance crew” is even thought-about a class of its personal throughout the bigger umbrella of highschool dance teams.
To offer some readability, Dance Spirit spoke with coaches and dancers from among the hottest sorts of highschool dance groups. Learn on for his or her insights.
Dance Crew
A typical highschool dance crew fuses quite a lot of kinds, together with jazz, hip hop, and sport day. Most groups carry out in school occasions—like pep rallies and sports activities video games—and dance competitions.
Mia Gomez is a senior at Coral Reef High School in Miami, FL, and captain of its dance crew, the Varsity Cudettes. She says that dance crew season begins in Could to work on approach and prepare for competitors prep camps in the summertime. Within the fall, dancers be taught their routines and carry out at pep rallies, and from November to February, they put together for Nationals. “Throughout Nationals season, it will get very intense,” says Gomez. Then, new members audition within the spring, and the cycle continues. The crew is cut up into junior varsity for underclassmen and varsity for upperclassmen. Due to their vary of kinds, dance crew members don’t stick to at least one explicit music style. They carry out to their faculty’s battle track at pep rallies and of their game-day routine, which they carry out at UDA High School Nationals. For competitions, they dance to something from instrumental items to upbeat pop.
Costumes: Gomez says most dance groups put on embellished and bejeweled leotards to bop competitions like UDA. Some groups like to combine it up with sudden kinds. (The Varsity Cudettes wore lengthy skirts eventually 12 months’s competitors.)
School prep: Many highschool alumni go on to affix school groups. Gomez says that lately she’s seen a rise within the variety of Varsity Cudettes who enter the faculty dance-team recruitment course of. Alumni have joined The Ohio State College dance crew and the LSU Tiger Ladies, for instance. “Now could be the time when loads of our ladies actually wish to be on a crew.”
Music Crew or Pom Crew
While you hear the time period “track crew,” you may think a bunch of singers. Nevertheless it truly refers to a sort of highschool dance crew frequent in California. Its identify comes from one in every of its features: main songs at sporting occasions. Versus cheerleaders, “track leaders are those that dance on the sidelines,” says Danielle Darwazeh, dance director and head coach of the song program at Santa Margarita Catholic Excessive Faculty in Santa Margarita, CA.
Music-team season is year-round, with clinics and auditions within the spring, UDA camp in the summertime, sporting occasions within the fall, and competitors season within the winter. Two sorts of performances comprise a track crew’s schedule: sideline and aggressive. Sideline performances happen at soccer and basketball video games, the place track leaders carry out about 10 brief dances, referred to as “sidelines” or “time-out dances.” At competitions, track groups compete in opposition to one another and different dance groups. The track crew for the Santa Margarita highschool attends 5 or 6 competitions per season main as much as UDA Nationals. “It’s a principal a part of our 12 months and an enormous element of what we’re working towards all through the season,” says Darwazeh.
Darwazeh is intently tied to song-leading historical past—she was a track chief at Mater Dei highschool, whose crew dates again to the late Nineteen Sixties: “It has progressed a lot over time in how a lot approach has been added to track main.” The identical tips that was once reserved for choose members of her varsity crew at the moment are necessary for junior varsity. Like dance groups, track groups are sometimes school preparatory in nature. In line with Darwazeh, track groups do “a little bit little bit of every part.” Their principal focuses are pom and jazz, which they compete in.
Custom: On senior night time, some track groups honor their graduating seniors by giving them flower crowns and sashes to put on whereas they dance on the sidelines. Youthful crew members will take turns sharing speeches in regards to the seniors that they’ve bonded with.
Props: Music leaders nearly at all times dance with poms, until they’re performing a contest jazz or hip-hop routine.
Drill Crew
If a crew takes the soccer discipline carrying a cowboy hat and boots, they’re in all probability a Texas drill crew. The drill fashion originates with the Kilgore College Rangerettes, a crew based at Kilgore School in 1940 by Miss Gussie Nell Davis. Davis’ crew carried out halftime reveals with the intention of preserving soccer followers of their seats, relatively than behaving “improperly” beneath the bleachers.
Former Rangerette Libby Koepke now coaches the drill team at Clear Creek Excessive Faculty in League Metropolis, TX. “Typically when folks hear ‘drill crew,’ they assume ROTC,” she says. “Nevertheless it’s not that. We’re doing dance approach.” (Groups do usually have military-inspired management ranks, referred to as officers, that embody colonel, lieutenant colonel, main, and captain, although some groups have ventured away from this setup, says Koepke.) Dancers sometimes carry out to marching-band music at soccer video games and sit within the stands throughout sport time, usually performing stationary routines within the stands. Outdoors of video games, they attend competitions in opposition to different excessive faculties. Classes can embody giant teams, small teams, and solos in kinds like jazz, modern, and lyrical, in addition to pom, kick, and novelty.
Drill crew is a year-round exercise, with soccer season within the fall, competitors/contests within the winter and spring, and a spring present. Dancers are sometimes required to take approach lessons in the summertime. Audition timing can range, with some groups holding auditions within the spring for the next 12 months and others within the winter.
Uniforms: Most drill groups mannequin their uniforms after the Rangerettes, who invented the Western-inspired ensemble of a cowboy hat, skirt (or pants, for boys), and cowboy boots at school colours. Crew members additionally usually put on a leather-based belt and, round their wrists, leather-based cuffs (referred to as gauntlets). The highest portion of the uniform varies, with some well-liked kinds being a vest, cropped jacket, or triangle-shaped overlay. All are extremely embellished with appliqués, sequins or rhinestones, and fringe. Drill groups additionally generally dance with common brief poms or lengthy poms referred to as streamers.
Signature step: Drill groups famously carry out kicklines and soar splits of their discipline routines.
Coloration Guard and Winter Guard
Coloration guard is a phase of a marching band that performs with props like flags, sabers, and wooden rifles. Along with dance vocabulary, there’s approach to how every prop, referred to as tools, is manipulated, together with spins and tosses. Guard originated from historic army traditions, when a regiment of troopers would carry flags onto the battlefield.
A 12 months is cut up into two seasons, fall and winter/spring. Within the fall, coloration guard performs an eight-to-10-minute manufacturing alongside the band’s musicians. These routines are sometimes carried out at halftime reveals and band competitions and might embody advanced motion, props, and themes. Then, coloration guard enters its “winter guard” season, the place the dancers (no band) carry out a special, barely shorter routine indoors to pre-recorded tracks, and generally with set items to assist painting a narrative.
“Dance approach is so vital as a result of your physique motion influences the way you spin,” says Kassandra Vasquez, who coaches coloration guard at Flowing Wells High School in Tucson, AZ. “Once I’m instructing my guards, at no matter degree of dance coaching they’re, we’re utilizing all the proper dance vocabulary.” In rehearsals, guard performers will go throughout the ground to apply dance approach, with tools coaching sometimes carried out with remoted workout routines or together with motion. At contests, judges rating routines on tools approach, motion, and the general design and influence of the efficiency, with an general deal with choreography and execution.
Costumes: Costumes often mirror the efficiency theme relatively than faculty colours. Flags and different props are sometimes styled to match. “You’re judged in your costume,” Vasquez says. “Some groups pay upwards of $200 to have them custom-made, however final 12 months I thrifted blazers for my youngsters as a result of they had been portraying workplace staff.” On the sector, coloration guard will put on an lively sneaker or jazz shoe, and for indoor winter guard, a jazz shoe, half-sole, or naked ft are most well-liked.
Music: Whereas fall season routines are carried out to the marching band, winter guard will get artistic, incorporating songs with lyrics, spoken phrase, and instrumental parts.
Majorette
Majorette dance originates from traditionally Black schools and universities (HBCUs) within the American South. (The style is distinct from baton-twirling majorettes.) In line with Chasen Kirby, who coaches Westover Excessive Faculty’s Dazzling Platinum Jewels in Fayetteville, North Carolina, majorette has unfold from HBCUs to excessive faculties and different neighborhood packages over the previous century.
Kirby describes majorette as a combination of various dance genres (jazz, hip hop, ballet, and extra), and every crew has its personal “aptitude.” For instance, he says, Jackson State College’s Prancing J-Settes are recognized for his or her hard-hitting bucking (transferring the hips back and front with deep, extensive legs), whereas The Southern College’s Fabulous Dancing Dolls are “daintier.” Majorettes carry out within the stands and on the sector throughout soccer video games, in addition to at competitions. The season typically runs from July to November—through the faculty 12 months, the Jewels apply from 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm Monday via Thursday, carry out at video games on Friday, and compete on Saturday.
Whereas majorette is a predominantly Black dance kind, Kirby says he’s seen dancers of assorted ethnicities, although it’s a lot rarer within the HBCU house. The identical goes for gender. Girls dominate majorette (at the moment, all of the Jewels are feminine), however different dancers have participated—together with Kirby, who carried out with a state marching band in highschool, then with the Livingstone School’s Stonettes. And although it’s hottest within the American South, majorette extends internationally.
Routines: Most dances are eight-to-16-count stand routines, however groups carry out longer halftime numbers on the sector. A present features a fanfare opening, drill, dance characteristic, ballad, and extra. “We’re an entity of the marching band,” says Kirby. “Any time it’s enjoying, we’re dancing.”
Uniforms: Uniforms are a serious a part of majorette, showcasing every crew’s distinctive fashion. They’re nearly at all times shiny or glowing, with loads of rhinestones or fringe to reinforce motion. “It’s at all times in regards to the glitz and the glam.”
Step
What’s now often called step—a high-energy mix of dance, theater, and physique percussion carried out world wide—started in South Africa as gumboot, a dance which advanced from miners hitting components of their our bodies to speak with one another. Over time, step built-in parts of army drills and have become well-liked in college Greek life earlier than spreading past.
Step is a full manufacturing with units, costumes, and spoken traces, says La’Darrion Keith Swanson, coach and founding father of Garland Unbiased Faculty District’s step team in Garland, TX. Numbers run from eight to 10 minutes, and each has a secret theme solely revealed through the efficiency. (Just lately, Garland has carried out “Dora the Explorer” and “Wednesday.”) Choreography blends a number of dance types, from jazz to hip hop to army fashion. Swanson warns to not confuse step with the present STOMP, which makes use of many extra props.
Step groups journey for competitions within the winter and spring, so the Garland crew does fundraising performances and pep rallies outdoors of comp season. In season, they apply for about 4 hours every weekday, with team-building actions and conditioning (together with weight lifting) each different week. The dancers take part in neighborhood service each quarter. Garland’s crew is coed, however some districts designate all-male or all-female groups. And whereas step is historically a Black dance kind, Swanson believes it’s for everybody. “On the finish of the day, it’s about self-expression,” he says. Step takes ardour, creativity, humor, and threat, and the purpose is at all times to entertain.
Venue: “The worst place for step is on the sector,” says Swanson. Ideally, step occurs on a stage with curtains and wings. (With the key themes, the factor of shock is essential.)
Music: Swanson usually makes use of three songs per efficiency. Step’s physique percussion performs off the music, which must be high-energy and on-theme. “It’s all in regards to the hype,” he says.
