By: Syd Bickers Photo by: Gretchen Allie
The Milligan College dance team took first place with a pom routine in its first ever Encore Dance Competition last weekend at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. The team is now looking to stretch its style and technic for future competitions.
“We are just trying to get our feet wet – trying to get a feel for what competition looks like,” said Coach Ronda Paulson.
The dance team competed against three other teams in the pro-am division, which is made up teams with 19 to 24-year-olds. Paulson said the team was up against a jazz routine, a contemporary routine and a clogging routine. Milligan performed a one and a half minute pom routine to a mix called Tick Tick Boom. Paulson was impressed that the team beat routines of three different styles.
Milligan was also awarded the diamond level score in its debut competition. Three Encore judges scored each team on a 300 points system. A diamond score is a total of 285 points or greater.
Senior dancer Rachel Owens was impressed with the team’s performance. She said the team’s collective energy was the root of the routines strength.
“We had set high expectations,” said Owens. “At the same time we all had a logical understanding that we all came from different places…some of us had never competed before on stage.”
Owens said the team had put a lot of time into practicing the routine the last two weeks leading up to the competition. She said the ten-member team is made up of dancers who are trained in different styles of dance. This made it more difficult for the group to be in sync, according to Owens. To remedy this, the team slowly walked through the routine hitting each move sharply.
Though Owens will be graduating in May, she hopes to see the team develop its technic. She envisioned the team bringing multiple routines in different styles to future competitions.
Paulson says the next step for the team is stretching, but not the kind of stretching the team does at every practice.
“I think that as we compete we are going to want to stretch ourselves and do things like jazz – maybe do a contemporary,” said Paulson. “At basketball games we are always going to do pom…You know, most people at a basketball game do not want to all the sudden see a slow lyrical in the middle of halftime.”
Paulson said Encore competitions are mostly made up of studio teams that have more time to practice technic and more freedom to experiment with different styles. The Milligan team focuses on pom during basketball season because the high-energy style is well received at games.
She said the team wanted to “play it safe” with a pom routine for its first competition. The team will close their first competition season with a performance in Gatlinburg Encore Dance Competition on April 4-7.
Not only does Paulson hope Encore will strengthen the team’s skills, but she also hopes it will increase the team’s numbers.
“The good thing about competing at something like an Encore dance competition where there is lots of dance studios is – it just gets the name of Milligan out there. We hope to use it as a very affective recruiting tool. All the sudden all these dancers that are loving to compete and loving to dance are thinking, ‘I could dance in college.’”
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