Four-year-old Weston High team takes New England title
Go ahead and read the next line twice if you need to. The Weston High School Dance Team is the number one varsity hip-hop team in New England. That's right. There are varsity hip-hop dance teams, which compete just as traditional sports teams do, and Weston holds the New England title.
It's an honor that says as much about the team's talent for ''crip walking" to tunes like ''Rock Ya Body" by Stagga Lee as it does about their gumption. And it's a signpost as well, marking just how mainstream this gritty music has become since it emerged on the streets of the Bronx in the 1970s.
Weston's hip-hop team, whose 10 members include honor students, a ballet dancer, and a violin player, now has its own trophy case in the literature and media wing of the school.
At a school that couldn't muster enough interest to form a cheerleading squad, the dance team now maintains school spirit to a gangsta beat. It dances at basketball games and assemblies and is being wooed for half-time at football games. Its annual ''Bring 'em Out" end of year show Wednesday is expected to draw an enthusiastic crowd.
Four years ago, Weston had no dance team. Most teachers and students had never heard of dance teams. And when six girls took the initiative to form the group as an activity club, few took notice.
Which was probably just as well. ''We were a rudimentary team. The first year we competed and placed seventh" at the New England regionals, said team captain Sonali Bloom. ''But that was out of seven teams. It was kind of unfortunate."
High school and college dance teams have competed in jazz, pom-pom, and kick-line dancing for decades, but only in the last few years has hip-hop made the competition roster.
''With music videos and MTV, and with LA choreography becoming big, teams are moving more toward hip-hop," said Andrea Ricci, New England territory manager for the Universal Dance Association, which sponsors dance team competitions nationally.
In fact in April, at the association's New England Dance Challenge in Springfield, where Weston won the title, more teams -- 10 -- competed in the hip-hop category than in any other.
''We wanted to do hip-hip from the start," said Bloom, explaining the shift. ''Jazz music wasn't popular. We wanted to dance to music that was appropriate for our age and stage in life."
Varsity hip-hop teams hail from a wide range of schools -- urban, suburban, and rural. Private schools compete as well. Placing third this year was St. Mary's Academy Bayview, an all-girls Catholic school in East Providence. Weston was the only Massachusetts hip-hop team at regionals.
''Chicago is the biggest area for dance teams in the country, and then the Midwest, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama," said Ricci. ''The Northeast has more teams that are dance-studio-based, but lately there's been a trend of people going from studio to high school teams."
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