March, 2024
By Emily Jaimes and Fiorella Mora, Staff Reporters
After Covid-19 striked out and got the entire United States to shut down, business, schools, and jobs were affected. It was devastating seeing how bad the disease had gotten and how much it had changed our daily lives. Here in KAC most of our programs started to shut down, however The Cardinal Dance Crew was one of the few programs that stayed all throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a whole different aspect, practices and competition were all online, the pandemic sort of took out the purpose of what being in a Dance Team felt like.
Until the school year 2020-2021, the Dance Team was finally able to go back to how they originally were yet the pandemic rules were still set and the team was small compared to previous years, despite the fact that they were a small team it didn’t stop them from bringing titles home.
Initially the year 2022- 2023 was the first year where the KAC Dance Crew got back to competing like they would before Covid-19 including winning 3 awards overall from their competitions, slowly shaping themselves to how they once were.
Working immensely hard with their coach Jaimie Vallejo, the year of 2023-2024 Dance Crew had their biggest comeback. In late August the team was already figuring out what songs they wanted to incorporate in their choreography. By the time they got to September they were already working on the moves they wanted to use; from working during their class time and staying after school the Hip-Hop routine was completed.
Around this time of preparation Coach Jaimie Vallejo mentioned the annual KIPP Nation ceremony, it involved being able to travel and perform at the ceremony surrounded by other KIPP Schools. This motivated the team to work harder so that they could audition; by December the choreography was at a level where they felt confident to submit a video. Once the team got that off their agenda they kept on practicing to be even more prepared for the pep-rally in which the team gets to show off their routine and entertain their classmates, teachers & staff. But in between that time frame the team was also working on their second choreography, balancing both routines but also trying to keep focused on mastering their Hip-Hop. It didn’t take that long until the team moved on to completing the Novelty routine, which is a dance that has a theme. They spend their own time after school practicing in order to have their choreography ready for competition.
Fast forward to competition time the team was confident on both of their routines winning 4 awards in their first competition and getting Dance Crew their first “ Woah Factor Award”, then winning 4 more awards in their second competition placing first in both Hip-Hop and Novelty, and lastly winning 3 in their 3rd and last competition of the year. In total bringing 11 trophies home but in fact the best part was the team getting compliments knowing their hard work was getting recognized and their legacy that was once shattered was restored. After the competition Dance Crew was ecstatic to find out that they had been selected to perform for the KIPP Summit ceremony. They were beyond happy that they were one of the 8 groups chosen out of 59 who had sent in their audition. It brought joy and determination because they felt as if their effort was really paying off. For now the team is working on perfecting routine that would be shown off on upcoming events. 5,6,7,8.. Dance Out!!!
The Cardinal Post 