7 ​Realities High School Dancers Are Constantly Facing

Minnesota high school dance team is truly a unique sport. Despite popular belief, it’s more difficult than most people assume. It requires strength, stamina and determination. During high school, the season would last for about four months. Those four months were filled with an abundance of excitement and challenges that built up to the annual state dance competition in February. This is where the best teams across the state come to compete.

I was lucky enough to dance on the state floor for two years, and there I have made some of the best memories of my life. Although dance team is rewarding, there is a lot of hard work that goes into perfecting routines. Minnesota dance team is intense, competitive and puts a unique spin on some people's average definition of dance.

Although there are many, here are seven of the realities of high school dance team in Minnesota.

1. Hearing themes/music for the first time

One of the most exciting moments of every season is finding out the music you will be dancing to and learning the choreography of it. This is where imaginations begin to run wild, and picturing this new dance on the state floor seems all too real. With that, getting new costumes to match whatever theme you will be dancing to is always fun. My favorite dance I did was jail themed. We wore black and white striped costumes and danced to prison-themed music. It’s also fun discovering other teams’ themes. Creativity and dance team go hand-in-hand.

2. Nothing else to talk about but dance

In the middle of the season when things get tough, it seems that dance team is all that is on your mind. With competitions filling your winter schedule, you devote most of your time to it. Speculating about future success or failures, talking about what to expect in terms of competition, and doing everything in your power to get to the state competition seems to be the main points of conversation

3. Those super hard practices

It’s been almost three years since I graduated high school, and I can still remember distinct difficult practices. I remember one practice where our coaches made us do our full dance twice in a row without a break at the beginning of practice. Dance is a physically demanding sport, and it is taxing on the body. To prove that, I had a stress fracture in my foot after my freshman year season from pounding on the floor too hard. Although it’s something I love to do, there were definitely times of exhaustion and frustration. It can get frustrating toward the end of the season running and drilling your dances repeatedly to get to perfection.

4. Those super easy days

Out of all practices, not all of them were dreadful. Some of them were actually fun and productive. Over breaks, our coach would occasionally bring in a yoga teacher to teach us yoga or she would teach us Zumba.

5. Anxiety before competitions

Talk about the competition, feelings of unpreparedness and sheer nervousness are all normal things that happen before competitions. You want to assure that everything is perfect on competition day so the performance is as good as possible.

6. Dance cliques

Because you spend so much time with your team, it’s common that a small clique begins to form. Due to difficult practices or other dance dramas, sometimes that’s the main point of conversation. Unless you have completed a season of high school dance team, you probably can’t relate to the struggles and realities of the season.

7. Obsessions with other teams

Whether they were in my section or not, I would obsess over other teams. After big competitions, I would immediately go to YouTube to try and find the dances to know what to expect at state. Dance is a unique sport because you can watch all of your competition perform. I love breaking down dances and making predictions almost more than I love dancing myself.

There you have it. Seven realities of high school dance team.