By Gabriel ‘28
I recall that the first time I danced was when I was about three years old, and my sister got Just Dance 4 for her birthday. I played a song for the first time, and felt exhilarated just moving to music. Though the choreography was just a woman with white face paint in a dark red alleyway putting her arms up and down, toddler age me was bestirred more than enough to realize a passion of mine.
I joined a dance crew when I was eleven. My dance skills greatly improved from that, but I always felt a fundamental problem. It was always “follow the leader.” I had no creative control in the process, and couldn’t express how I felt.
When I got into Harvard-Westlake for seventh grade in 2022, there were two dance classes for me to choose from: the no-cut Intro to Contemporary Dance, and the audition-only Contemporary Dance Workshop One (CDW1). I thought “I like dance and I’m not that bad at it, so why not audition?” The audition consisted of some technique exercises and a simple choreography that the teacher taught us. To my surprise, I got into the class. One day when I came to my dance class, my teacher announced that he would put us into small groups and let us choreograph our own dances to music of our choice, which we would then perform in the January show. When I found out I was in a group with my closest friends, we immediately got together and started choosing music.
It took me a moment to process, but this was exactly what I wanted. Just me, my friends, and full creative control. We had three minutes of clay that we could mold to express however we felt. It was from that moment that I realized that dance is not just moving to music, but personal expression via music. We choreographed to Ariana Grande’s Side to Side, which became a favorite memory of mine.
In 2023, I started selecting my courses for eighth grade. For dance, I had two options: Contemporary Dance Workshop Two (CDW2), which was audition-only unless you had already taken CDW1; or Dance Production (DP). DP was audition-only, no matter what classes you had taken previously, and it was only for eighth and ninth graders. I got to my audition, which flowed similarly to the CDW1 audition except with one major difference. After the technical exercises, we performed solos that we choreographed beforehand. I performed a simple hip-hop piece, and to my shock, I got in.
I took the class in the 2023-24 year knowing little beforehand, but I soon realized my favorite part of the class was a major contrast from CDW1. In CDW1, the shows operate as a recital; every group makes a different dance, and they perform it. However, in DP, there is one annual show in the spring, and it has a theme and a cohesive story. Though people are still put into small groups, everybody in DP is in anywhere from nine to thirteen dances in the show, as opposed to CDW’s one or two. Students are still at the creative forefront of each small group piece. In addition, while CDW1 and CDW2’s rehearsals are in class, with the only after-school rehearsals being the week of the show, DP’s rehearsals are either after school or ninth period (only for ninth graders) from November all the way until the March show, as well as in class.
My favorite part of the process was exploring each idea within the theme and seeing exactly how and where it went into the story. At the beginning of the year, the teacher announced the theme and gave us choreography forms to fill out. These would be small questionnaires with the idea we wanted to explore, song choices, and notes on how it relates to the story. Honestly, I liked to think of it as artistic control on a pedestal. We had full creative freedom, but with a base to go off of.
I got assigned to about ten choreographies. One of the best parts about DP is the time commitment needed and the implications of that; when you’re there, you know everyone else is as dedicated to dance as you, and everyone you work with in the class is as excited as you are.
