By: Emily Lock
After the fall of the DDHS dance team in 2018, there was little outward student interest in this extracurricular. However, passion for the sport rekindled this year. Coach Johana was a part of the dance team in her high school years from 2014 to 2018. Once her group had graduated, the team faded away. She had a dream this summer that the dance team would come alive again. She made her dream come true. Her hardest struggle was finding the people who were interested in dancing and finding the talent they always had within them.
She said, “I’ve always loved dancing. I wanted people to find something within themselves that they didn’t have and push them to their fullest potential.” The team ended up consisting of nine people.
“We start practices with warmups. It’s the key before dancing. We stretch our arms and legs with dances in between, before doing some floor stretching. Then we do some techniques like leaps, battements, turns, and jumps on both sides before practicing their routine.” Battement is a French word in ballet to extend the leg to the front, side, or back, either repeatedly or as a single movement.
Her favorite thing about coaching is seeing growth from the first day to a week in. Seeing how the team picks up things quickly and shows their full potential. “I’m so excited when they show how much they are capable of and I get to relive my passion for dance!” The dance team has had a few performances, their most popular one was at the Winter Week pep rally. It was the first time we saw these nine, strong amazing dancers perform. Their most recent performance was at the last boy’s basketball game at Elkhorn.
Coach Johana said it was an amazing season and she is so proud of each one of the dancers. Julia Warren, a junior at DDHS decided to help Coach Johana lead the team. Julia said her favorite part of helping out was, “Helping others share the same passion as myself. I decided to help out because I didn’t have free time to be on the team but I wanted to be a part of it.” She helps Coach Johana with teaching the dancers techniques and choreography. Julia and Coach Johana are proud of how far they have come and encourage kids to come out next year.
thecometeer