This year, students are finding a new way to express their creativity at school through Del Mar’s new dance program.
Beginning this year, students are participating in dance as an elective class. With support from music teacher and performing arts department head Bill Burkhead and Chloe Biggs, a second-year theatre teacher at Del Mar, ran the idea of a dance class by the school’s admin last year.
Starting dance at just two years old, Biggs was motivated to start a dance class, believing it was an important class to offer at a school like Del Mar.
“I think that sometimes theater and music can be a little bit intimidating, especially for our English language learners,” Biggs remarks. “And I feel like dance really is its own language, and it’s more approachable for people who maybe aren’t as comfortable with English yet, and it’s just something different to offer.”
Biggs also discusses the positive turnout of the class considering how new it is, with about 32 students taking the class this year.
Students began the year building their knowledge of different types of dance before jumping into learning choreography. This semester, both classes are learning choreography based on the musical comedy “Six,” which tells the story of Henry VIII’s six wives.
Biggs remarks, “There are only six people in the cast, so it’s never going to be a show I can direct from the theater standpoint, but the songs are so great, and I figured it would be a good cohesive plan for the first showcase, to have everything come from the same show.”
Junior Venice Davis shares her thoughts on practicing for their upcoming performance and her prior experience with dance, stating, “It’s been a while since I’ve performed in front of anyone. But, I can say, like, it’s a little awkward. I feel like it’s gonna be awkward because some of the dances are very questionable, and some of the moves are considered, like, sexy. So, since we’re performing this in front of mostly parents, it’s like, well, I don’t know what my mom’s gonna think, but, it’s okay.”
“I definitely think that you know, some people’s families are a little more conservative than others, and that’s totally fine,” Biggs adds, “and especially if you’re new to the world of dance and performing on a stage at all, like that can always be a little bit embarrassing or, you know, you could be a little bit nervous. But definitely everything that’s being included is PG 13 or less because we’re fully expecting people’s little siblings to come and stuff like that. So I don’t think that anyone should be concerned, but I totally get that, you know.”
Students are taught a new dance every three days and will be performing nine songs from the musical during their showcase. Many parts of Six had previously gone viral on Tiktok, Biggs believing that might help her students in understanding the show.
Junior Ava Bradley comments, “Yeah, I knew about the musical, like, a while ago, and I was excited when we were doing it. And I was familiar with mainly about a chunk of the dances. I like that she included dances with them because they don’t really have dances in, like, the musical musical, because they were holding microphones, like more or less just moving around.”
Next semester, Biggs plans to cover more cultural dances and allow her students to collaborate and create original choreography.
All classes will perform together during the Theater and Dance showcase on Dec. 10.
