College Dance Team

College dance teams not only offer a fun sport for talented dancers to participate in, but also an exciting and competitive atmosphere for dance fans to soak up dancers' performances. Many colleges offer dance teams; even colleges that don't offer a dance major or minor are likely to have a college team for the talented dancers among their students.

For information on dance teams and information for your team regarding competitions, routines, uniforms, and more, the blog College Dance Team is a good resource. For very serious dancers, it may even be the case that you check out a college's team before applying or enrolling at a school. If that is the case, careful research into each university's team will help you decide which school has the team that will be the best fit for you both in terms of style of dance and the personalities of the other students who will be your team mates.

Visit each school's website as you complete your applications. Look for the college dancing team or club among the student activities or 'Student Life' section of the school's website. Making sure that a team will be a good fit for you is an important first step if dance is an essential part of your daily life.

Every year, dance teams from across the nation come together to compete in the national championships. Similar to cheerleading, dance teams have certain moves to perform that the judges are usually looking to see performed well. As with cheerleading, the art of a fantastic dance team is having a large number of people who can perform the same movement in exactly the same manner at exactly the same instant in time. This may sound easy; however, any dancer will tell you that it's the soloists who have it 'easy'…the rest of the dancers are working hard just to look like one dancer though they are many.

This art of looking like one dancer is well illustrated by the 2004 championship routine performed by the team from the University of Minnesota—Minneapolis. Their ability to perform difficult elements in perfect synchrony is exhibited in their award-winning routine.

Another university with an award-winning dance team is Michigan State University. In this routine done to a Madonna medley, the precision required for a dance team to wow the audience is well illustrated.

The energy in the University of Kansas team makes their routines crowd-pleasers, and their technique is more than up to par.

Although it's certainly easiest to audition for and join an existing team, there is also the possibility of starting a team, which offers flexibility in the team you create, but is a lot of work to get a team up and running. If your school already has a dance team, it could be the case that the student body is not large enough for there to be enough dancers for a second or a third team. However, if your school does not have a team, starting one is an experience in and of itself.

If your school has a team and you would like to join it, you'll need to attend auditions and prepare yourself for a competitive environment. Take the audition seriously, and be friendly but professional, and you'll stand a fair chance of being chosen as a new member. Before auditioning, make sure that the style of dance practiced by the team is one that fits for you, and, on a practical note, check the practice schedule as well as the competitions before auditioning to make sure that you can be a committed member of the team. If all these factors fall into place for you, a college team experience can be lots of fun as well as a rewarding dance experience.

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