Dance Team

Dance Team

The Twin Cedars Community School District Board of Directors should decide in favor of funding a school dance team. Twin Cedars, a small country based school of approximately 500 students K-12, has never had the benefit of having a dance team. Two years ago, three Twin Cedars students got together with their dance instructor, Shannon Smith, an alumnist of Twin Cedars, and suggested that the school should have a dance team. Smith volunteered her time to coach and choreograph for a new dance team. Smith took this idea to the principal of Twin Cedars, Mike Helle. Helle agreed to allow Smith to start a dance team that could practice at school, but refused to fund the program as an extracurricular activity. This meant that if there was to be a dance team, all funds would have to be raised by the dance team members alone and Smith would have to volunteer all of her time and effort without being paid. Despite these two points Smith agreed to start the dance team.

Auditions were held, a team was formed, and the team members began choreography for their first routine. The new TC dance team had their own fundraisers and went asking for donations from local businesses, to help support the new team and help pay for dance team costumes. The team managed to raise enough to buy cheap costumes for all of the members. The new dance team had practice two days a week at 7:00 a.m. all year. They performed at a few football and basketball games throughout the year.

The next school year came around and the whole process was repeated. During this year the dance team even managed to put together a Saturday night show at the school, that included other surrounding school’s drill and dance teams. In the two years of the team’s existence the school administrators allowed for the use of the building for practice, they allowed the team to perform at sporting events, and they allowed the the team to have shows. On top of that, they announced the dance team as the Twin Cedars dance team and even added a new spot in the Twin Cedars Yearbook to allow for pictures of the dance team. The school took all the privileges of having a school dance team, yet took none of the responsibilities a school has for an extracurricular activity.