Irish dancing, ballet, tap, jazz, and hip-hop, are some of the various types dances that students do as extra-curricular activities. There are also a wide range of reasons for those students who take dance classes.
Sophomore Rachel Hong Fong takes ballet classes twice a week to help her improve at her ice skating. Senior Jackie O’Neil does ballet as well but for different and more holistic reasons.
“[Ballet] is a way of expressing myself. I have also made a lot of friends and it’s a great form of exercise,” said O’Neil.
O’Neil has previously taken tap, jazz and lyrical classes but is currently only taking ballet and checcetti, a type of rigorous ballet-like training class. Ballet is her favorite type of dance because she finds it the most beautiful dance to watch.
Freshmen Rachel Shaw has been taking Irish Dancing lessons for nine years and enjoys the fun, physical activity. Shaw doesn’t participate in the dance team because she wants to focus on her schoolwork. She does extra yoga to help her be stronger and stay in shape for her dance classes.
Another long term dancer is junior Casey Howard who has also Irish danced for eleven years.
“I started dancing because my older sister danced. She started dancing after seeing the show Riverdance,” said Howard.
Freshman Madeline Nyce participates in ballet, tap, jazz, cecchetti and lyrical. She has been dancing for 11 years. She prefers to do all these dances outside of school because she is less interested in the Marshall dance team’s style of dance.
Senior Janelle Thomas and Nyce are alike in the sense that they do many of the same dances. Thomas has been doing ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical and contemporary since she was five years old. She does not participate in Marshall’s dance team because she is very committed to her dance studio and does not have extra time because of the amount of schoolwork she has.
“My favorite type of dance is jazz because it’s very high energy and I love the performance aspect of it,” Thomas said.
Sisters Alea and Anna Kohlbrenner, sophomores, take part in a less-traditional type of dance such as hip-hop and dubstep. They take classes twice a week for the exercise and because they enjoy the music. This is their sixth year taking dance classes.