South’s Dance team finished their season with a fundraising show Saturday January 28 that left the team with mixed emotions. Senior Summer Gonzales-Ovitt describes the feeling as “bittersweet,” because while she has more free time now, she’s “not going to be able to come back and dance with [the team]” since she’s graduating.
The show included dances by South’s team, but also South alumni dancers, kids from dance clinics the teams hold, and other dance organizations. This was the team’s 6th annual show, planned by the team and the coaches. The show is their biggest and last fundraiser of the year.
The show also included a captain’s dance, choreographed and performed by the captains Gonzales-Ovitt and Senior Madeleine Pemberton. Gonzales-Ovitt said she was “extremely nervous” because it was her first time performing with only one other person, and she “had friends and family there that hadn’t seen [her] dance.”
Pemberton described the show as “a really fun way to end the season” but that there was “a lot of crying because it was the last show.” She said the season was successful in that their goal was to beat Southwest, and “although we were second to them in city,” said Pempberton, “we feel like, we’re getting close to beating them!”
Gonzales-Ovitt said she felt like “all our hard work paid off” for the show. The highlight for her was when the entire team danced to “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga, because it included the girls on the team that didn’t get to compete. “It gave everyone a chance to get on the floor,” said Gonzales-Ovitt.
Pemberton said the fundraising was successful, but also that it’s “a way to show every style of dance we do, in one event, in our own building, because we usually go to the suburbs [to perform].”
One reason Gonzales-Ovitt is going to miss dancing at South is because it was a way she could express herself, and “if I had a bad day, I could talk to [the team] and they would turn it around.”
Pemberton has also had a good experience on the dance team, saying “I never thought that I would join a sport. It’s been the most rewarding thing I think I’ve done.”
