The Sweet Home High School Huskiettes are bringing experience to the dance floor this year, and they’re ambitiously tackling a much more difficult dance routine than they have in the last few years.
The team returns all 11 of last year’s members and adds three new dancers, including a senior from Colombia, Brenda Bejarano, and freshmen Emily Conrad and Laura Mauer.
Returning dancers include fourth-year dancer Whitney Stonera senior. Third-year dancers include juniors Kayla Froman, Jessica Parga and Sara Traeger. Second-year dancers include senior Katherine Reed; junior Tori Lillich; and sophomores Michaella Parks, Krystal Juza, Rachel Thomas, Kaitlyn Long and Kyle Lewis.
“It’s nice to have that many returning members,” Coach Kristin Ashcraft said. Last year, she had eight or nine new dancers.
“The light bulb goes on the second year,” she said. “Toes are pointed; leaps are higher.”
And the dancers want to take their show to the next level, she said. They have pushed for the more advanced routine they will perform this year.
Their theme this year is “Love,” Ashcraft said. It’s a contemporary piece, more lyrical. The performance is about 5 minutes 30 seconds long and set to “Dancing” by Elisa.
The dance style features more lifts, heavily involving male dancer Lewis, Ashcraft said, including overhead lifts and group lifts. He is a central character in the unfolding story of the performance rather than taking the usual limited male role. He is joined by partners Stoner and Parga.
“It’s more ballet style moves, which are more difficult,” Ashcraft said.
The Huskiettes, like most of the teams they meet, use samples from several songs to inject changes and dynamics into their performances. This year, Sweet Home will perform to the entirety of a single song, and that in and of itself makes it more difficult without the changes introduced by switching songs.
“Any time you do a lyrical piece, it’s going to be boring unless you put in the emotion,” Ashcraft said. “So they’re actors too. It’s got to be dead on or it’s going to be boring to the audience.”
That acting is carried in facial expressions, Ashcraft said. Rather than smiling throughout the performance, they dancers must portray the story through their movements and through their faces.
“You can’t just dance it,” she said. “You have to feel it. You have to perform it.”
West and South Albany high schools both did it last year, she said, and they did well with the style.
Her team was insistent they wanted to do it too, she said, and “they can do it.”
Stoner has done a great job leading the choreography, Ashcraft said. She has a vision of the routine in her head, and “she’s done a great job of mapping out all the choreography, teaching it.
“If we can put her vision on the floor, we’ll be doing really good.”
Stoner’s creativity and choreography have improved tremendously over the years, Ashcraft said. Assisting in the choreography are junior Parga, sophomore Parks and Ashcraft.
The song and dance start out to a slow piano part, building dramatically, louder and faster, to a graceful ending, Ashcraft said.
It includes a number of features that judges have looked for in recent years.
Last year, judges asked ‘Where is the “wow factor,”‘ Ashcraft said. That’s included this year, with multiple lifts. The style is more modern, off-center, more abstract and less symmetrical. The dancers break into groups of twos and threes frequently.
“I think this year, what we’re doing are things the judges will like,” she said. “I think we have the elements that make an interesting routine.”
Ashcraft is enthusiastic about her team this year, and like other years thinks it’s the best team ever, she said. “This is the best team I’ve ever had. In the fact that they’re all friends, that’s true.”
The team usually breaks up into several different groups, she said. This year, they see each other socially outside the context of the dance team.
The dance team will not compete at Thurston this year, Ashcraft said.
Instead, the team’s first competition will be at Canby on Jan. 31. After competitions at Stayton and Molalla, the Huskiettes are scheduled to perform at Sprague on Feb. 28. The Sprague competition is new to the schedule this year and will include mid-competition comments from judges.