Dancing Days

I can't believe it's two weeks until finals and three weeks until my junior year finally comes to a close. Where did all the time go? I'm not ready to be a senior yet! But that's they way life goes - fast, and it changes whether  we can believe it or not. I love college with all my heart. The classes, my friends, dance my service sorority - the list goes on. And my senior year I'm going to make sure to soak it all up.  Saturday April 29th at 5pm is the Orchesis Showcase, so if you don't have any plans, now you do! Admission is free but donations are highly encouraged. The show is located on the Markin Performance Court.  Two of my teammates and I just finished choreographing our pom dance for it and we begin practice Sunday. I'm SO excited to be practicing again. Dance, and my teammates, are just my absolute favorite thing in the whole world.  I also can't believe I've been writing this blog for 14 weeks now. This went by fast too! I really like havi...

One of the things I love about dance is the bond it creates. There's something about spending hours practicing together - trying, failing, achieving, losing, winning. And we do it as a single unit. The struggle or success of one is that of us all.  A huge part of what bonds dancers, especially a dance team, is the vulnerability dance demands. You have to be willing to try and fail at new choreography, tricks, technique - and trust that your team will support you no matter what. When I first made the Bradley Dance Team, I had never done pom before. Pom is a style of dance that includes sharp movements and complex formations while holding pom poms. Though I had extensive ballet, jazz, modern and lyrical training, pom was something I had never even attempted before. The first time I held a pom was the weirdest feeling in the world.  But thanks to my incredible team and my endless practicing on my own, I look as though I've been doing the style for years. My team was so understand...

Like any other sport, dance is demanding. Dance requires an immense amount of physical exertion, so dancers need to train their bodies to have extensive endurance and strength. Here's the catch though: dancers have to make it all look effortless.  A lot of people will say "dance looks easy." And that's exactly the point. It's our job to make it look easy. The reality is the exact opposite. Football players can grunt, soccer players can yell, volleyball players can frown. All of those sports are incredibly difficult - it's true. Most of them are harder than dance. But dance is still difficult. Dancers are expected to smile through the pain, to make each movement look effortless, to hide all of the "ugly" and only present the pretty.  With that being said, the expectation for dancers' body image is quite different than the average athlete. Historically, dancers are supposed to be "skinny" - have minimal muscle, lean, long proportions and ...

 So I said practice was over...just kidding! Yes practice did end, but then we got another opportunity to perform and of course we had to take it.   At Bradley there are three dance organizations. We are the Bradley Dance Team, also known as the Bravettes. The Bradley Bravettes Dance Team is a collegiate dance team made up of dedicated dancers. Their style of dance usually consists of Jazz, Pom and Hip Hop. You can see the Bravettes cheering and dancing at home basketball games, as well as the annual Missouri Valley Conference in St. Louis. The Bravettes also represent Bradley University at many university and community events, such as Lighting of the B, Little Bravettes Kids Camp and dance team clinics. Go Braves!  Then there's Orchesis Dance Company. They are a club at Bradley that choreographs studio dance based pieces and performs them at two showcases they put on a year.  Finally, there's Vitality. Vitality is a hip hop group that performs at Lighting of th...

 Now that we are in more of an "off-season" (although we still have one more performance left to prepare for, we are now focusing on more miscellaneous projects for our team. During the season it is SO hectic that all we really have the time and focus for is practice, technique and choreography. But with that 10 extra hours a week I mentioned in my previous blog post, we get the chance to work on projects that will improve our team as a whole. This off-season's project happens to be new uniforms!!!   As I mentioned in a prior post, we are not university funded. So even things like our uniforms, backpacks and team jackets, we pay for ourselves. Backpacks and team jackets we include in our team fee at the start of each year  but uniforms are a little too pricey to include in that. Uniforms can range from $150-$500 a piece (meaning just the top or just the bottom). We have worked so hard fundraising for MVC while also trying to set aside money in our Bravettes savings f...

With the basketball season now come to a close I find myself with a LOT more time on my hands. Since I don't have practice Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays and no games I've gained an extra 10 plus hours in my schedule. I'll be honest, a lot of that I fill with homework and it was really nice not to have practice during midterms week. Most people might feel relieved but mostly I miss it. Practice is my favorite time of every day. We always say bring your best self to dance and leave all else at the door. It's freeing to have a space to release the stress of a busy college schedule and just laugh with your friends. Don't get my wrong, we work our butts off, but we do it with a smile. The bruised legs and achy muscles don't feel so bad when you have such amazing teammates to surround yourself with.  A goal of mine with all of my newfound time is to take some moments to reflect. I am such a go, go, go person. Always productive, always completing new tasks, always ma...

MVC Weekend 2023 definitely takes a spot in one of my top five college experiences. Even though Bradley lost in the finals, I am so proud of our basketball team for all the hard work and effort they put in to make it this far. Every game had us jumping up and down, shaking our poms and chanting "GO BU!" The energy in the Enterprise Center was unmatched. I loved seeing Bradley come together for this tournament.  The first game, prelims, was on Friday. We played against UNI and won by six points. We held the lead for most of the game with a couple moments of ties that we kept breaking. Then came day two, the semi-finals. This is where the competition got more intense. We won by a single point - an absolutely insane  game against Indiana State. That game had us screaming for Bradley, cheering with everything we had in us that BU would advance to the finals, and we did. In the finals we met our rival again: Drake. Bradley was seeded number one after winning the Regular Season Cha...