5,6,7,8… a new season for the University of Rhode Island’s Dance Company Photo Courtesy of: Maddy Godeck
The University of Rhode Island’s Dance Company is leaping and twirling into another season with classes in various styles of dance.
URI has three different dance teams, according to Dance Company President Lillian Marie, a fourth-year student. The Ramettes, URI’s Division I dance team, is the highest level of commitment, as they perform at each football and basketball game and compete. The University’s Club Dance team is a lower level of commitment, but still requires an audition to get on the team.
What makes the Dance Company different from those other organizations is that it is not audition-based, Marie said.
“We don’t hold auditions. We welcome everybody of all dance levels, even if they’ve never danced prior,” Marie said.
Currently, URI’s Dance Company is offering classes in six different styles of dance; tap, jazz, ballet, lyrical, pointe and hip-hop, according to Marie. Classes typically happen twice a week in Edwards Auditorium or Quinn Auditorium, based on availability.
The Dance Company is currently in one of their biggest seasons yet, with 95 to 100 people in the organization as a whole. Each class typically has about 40 people in it, which can be challenging at times, according to Marie.
The organization also holds a “trial week” for participants after the first meeting of a new semester so that students can get an idea of the level of commitment that the company requires, Marie said.
“After our first meeting, we get a bunch of new faces and then we hold a trial week for them to see if they actually want to do it,” Marie said. “And that’s because if they join, they’re committed to being with us and they have a certain amount of absences.”
Marie also discussed the recital done at the conclusion of each semester that acts as a culmination of months of work for performers.
“At the end of each semester, the organization has a recital to showcase the routines that they’ve been working on throughout the duration of the season,” Marie said. “The performance is typically two hours long and features 10 group dances, along with some solo and duo performances.”
Rather than coaches, classes are taught by student members of the Dance Company, typically upperclassmen, according to Alana Nyhuis, a third-year psychology student and lyrical teacher. As a teacher, she instructs two different classes a week and choreographs two routines.
Nyhuis said she was asked to audition to be a teacher at the end of her second year by a fourth year student at the time. She called the experience “the best thing to ever happen to her,” explaining that if she’d not become a teacher for the dance company, she would’ve transferred from URI.
With no prior choreography experience, she explained that she was nervous in her first semester of teaching lyrical for the dance company.
“I danced competitively for 15 years, but I never choreographed anything besides doing little dances with my friends for fun when I was younger,” Nyhuis said. “When I started, it was nerve wracking, but it honestly came very naturally to me. It’s fun to do the more creative side of dancing compared to just learning routines and performing them.”
Her favorite part of being a teacher is the pride she feels when a routine that she choreographed is performed at the recital.
URI’s Dance Company is having their first performance of the year on Dec. 3, 2022, and will be having practices and rehearsals until then.