Rise of Dance Troupe cancels cheerleading By Samantha Parr A fter sports games and rallies, a clan of dancers dressed in matching attire and sneakers perform a synchronized routine to current hip hop music. In a more traditional high school setting, this group would be the cheer team. At Drake, it’s Dance Troupe. Dance Troupe and cheer are two different sports and forms of dance. Dance Troupe’s style is hip hop, a style that has recently gained populari ty, and cheerleading is more stunt-based. The rise of Dance Troupe has led to the disappearance of the cheer team over the past five years. “Last year the stepped coach down at the end of the season, which was the end of the basketball season, and we only had three cheerleaders,” Assistant Principal Nate Severin said. the cheerleaders do as much,” Sorenson said. The other team captain, senior Kyra Smith-Stewart, joined Dance Troupe as a freshman because she was a dancer and wanted to be on a sports team. SmithStewart described Dance Troupe as “a perfect way to have both.” Despite their victories, Dance Troupe has also faced many challenges this year. According to Sorenson, the team rehearsed without a coach for an entire two-month period earlier in the year. Although the dancers usually compose most of the choreography, the driving force and foundation of any sports team is a good coach. There have also been issues with administration in the past that have frustrated the team members. Sometimes the team does not have access to practice in the yoga room because other groups also use it after school, which takes away from their rehearsal time. Dance troupe performs at the winter rally on February 7, 2020. Photo by Toby Gibbons As more people joined Dance Troupe around five years ago, According to Sorenson, Dance Troupe the interest in cheer diminished. One of the Dance Troupe captains, senior Sophie Sorenson, is among the people who were more attracted to Dance Troupe than cheerleading. At a young age, she became entranced by the team’s diverse set of choreography and current music. “I used to go to all the basketball games when I was really young, like eight, and I would see them perform at the halftimes, and I wouldn’t really see 15 The Jolly Roger | April 2020 has been a Marin County Athletic League (MCAL) sports team since 2015. This allowed the Dance Troupe captains to make cuts at tryouts, which was a major stepping stone in the development of the team. Because the team is smaller now than it was in the past, the dancers have formed a tight-knit community. “I like that it’s year-round because we really get to know everyone on the team and we get to be really close,” SmithStewart said. “I think there’s just miscommunication a lot of times with the difficulty of dance and how long it actually takes us to put together stuff,” Smith-Stewart said. However, the dancers do not let these inconveniences get in the way of their performances. In response, Dance Troupe receives a ubiquitous sense of support from the student body. Junior Dance Troupe member Meleah Silverstein said, “There’s not a lot of turnout for female sports. For Dance Troupe, a predominantly female sport, to get so much school support for it is a cool thing.”
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