By Sarah Welsh-Huggins
Photo Courtesy of Autumn Green
When the Precision Step Dance Team members took to the stage in their “angry baby” costumes for Lafayette’s So You Think You Can Dance competition last Friday, they did so basking in the glow of their first major competitive success.
In addition to claiming first prize in the Lafayette group dance category, Precision has placed second and first in two other competitions this fall. The most recent win came at the Princeton “Hit ‘Em With The Beats” performance on December 3, a day after the triumph at So You Think You Can Dance.
At the first competition this fall during the Bucknell University “Bison Step-Off,” the team “didn’t know there was a second place,” said Secretary Jenny Mena ‘14. “It was the perfect way to start off the year. For the freshmen it was like, we could really do this.”
The nearly twenty members of Precision never expected to win $500 in the team’s first-ever competitive performance, especially stepping against many traditional powerhouse sorority and fraternity teams. At the “Bison Step-Off,” Precision was the non-Greek affiliated team.
“Our team is very, very young,” President Autumn Green ‘13 said. Founded in 2008 by Kamisha Hodge ‘11, the team “started off strong, but kind of dropped off last year. We had a lot of graduating seniors.”
But thanks to Green’s active promotion of Precision, the team expanded greatly in size this fall and now includes seven first year students.
And despite the relative inexperience of the team — compared with other Step teams that have competed for decades — Precision’s steppers believe that the closeness of the team gives them extra motivation to excel
“It is a collaborative effort,” Green said. Because the team is so young, “it makes it more rewarding,” when the team performs well.
Rooted in African dances and competitive performances by historically-black fraternities and sororities in the 1900s, stepping incorporates elements of multiple forms of dance. Consequently, although “75 percent of the girls haven’t had step experience,” it does not take long for new members to pick up the full-body, percussive moves of stepping, Green said.
When Green first arrived at Lafayette as a freshman, she intended originally to try out for the Lafayette Dance Team, “But the intensity and drive of Precision stood out to me,” she said.
At times, this intensity and the high energy level required for stepping makes it “a lot of rougher,” than other types of dance, Meena said. The greatest challenge, she said, is adapting to changes in pace and rhythm. “During practice we get good at a step and then during show times we do it at ten times the speed.”
Precision spends over four hours a week practicing, which includes one hour on Saturday devoted to choreography. Although Green composes most of the steps, “it’s a group effort,” Meena said. Each dancer is given a certain number of counts for a dance, from which each person creates a distinct step for the rest of the group to learn. Both Green and Meena agree that this teamwork — in addition to their thematic creativity and ability to engage their audiences — is what has contributed to their successes this fall.
“Where we are is so good,” Meena said. “I hope we can continue in this direction. What’s important is how we’re gonna move forward.” In the coming years she hopes that “everybody is passionate enough about stepping to keep it going.”
In the coming months, Precision will continue to compete throughout the Lehigh Valley and beyond. They will next perform at Lafayette for the spring semester’s ISA Extravaganza.