Silver Wings will be holding a middle school dance intensive Oct. 25 in the auxiliary gym from 8 a.m to 12 p.m. The dance intensive will go over a floor routine and streamer jazz routine, then end in a parent performance at Brain Brazil Stadium at 11:30 a.m.
“I’m hoping that any girl who comes to [this intensive] question [if] they want to tryout,” junior lieutenant Kimberly Sharp said. “Our biggest goal is to help these girls show how fun drill team is, and give them encouragement to help them want to tryout for the team.”
The dance intensive will cover routines performed by the Silver Wings, including across the floor techniques and basic skills of dance. The intensive will end with a simplified version of the Silver Wings’ streamer jazz routine performed at football games, which the middle schoolers will perform for their parents at the end of the intensive.
“We will [start] with a 15 minute warm up to get their bodies prepared,” head director Lauren Wheeler said. “[The] basic techniques and dance elements are there to teach some of the basics of dance that we do in Silver Wings. Most middle school students have never done kicking before and that’s something exclusive to drill team.”
Silver Wings previously held their dance clinic on Oct. 4., which was available for kindergarteners through eighth grade.
“[Having] a middle school intensive separates it specifically for middle schoolers, especially incoming eighth graders,” captain Ryann Phillips said. “They will have more of a chance to see what Silver Wings is about without younger, less experienced girls.”
There is an alternative plan if the dance intensive is affected by rain: The parent performance would be held in a different facility.
“If it’s raining, then we’ll keep [the performance] inside,” Wheeler said, “But it looks like right now that the weather should clear up around that time. So that’s the hope.”
Last year was the first year Silver Wings kicked off the middle school dance intensive.
“Last year we went into it with a good idea of what would be best,” Wheeler said. “We got great feedback and we had a lot of girls in attendance — more than we expected. It’s something that we’ve just decided to keep on doing this year.”
Silver Wings will also be hosting a hopeful help session on March 4 and 11. In preparation for tryouts, The Silver Wings will be teaching the technique and style that will be required at tryouts for incoming ninth graders. Tryouts for silver wings happen after spring break March 23-27.
“We want to get more exposure into the middle schools [for] Silver Wings and dance in general because middle schools in LISD don’t have dance programs or dance classes [like] band or orchestra [does],” Wheeler said. “So we wanted to find a way to invite people in to see what Silver Wings is about so they can start to understand who we are and what we do isn’t all just high kicks on a football field.”
