The crowd sits on the edge of their seats, waiting with anticipation for the CESJDS dance team to step out onto the gym floor and perform. The music starts to play and students and faculty watch as the team executes what they’ve been working on for the past month.
On Friday, Dec. 6 at Kabbalat Shabbat, the dance team performed to a mix of the hip hop songs “Crazy In Love” by Beyonce and “Pon de Replay” by Rihanna, taking about two and a half minutes for the full performance.
Seniors and captains Cati Werbin, Molly Wollner and Navah Gris began choreographing the dance this past summer. Werbin choreographed the first half, Wollner did the second and Gris made the transition between the two.
Though the captains choreographed the dance in the summer, they had to learn and adapt to the new members who joined the team this school year.
“It’s a new team, this is our first performance, so we had to learn how to work together and find everybody’s strengths and weaknesses and support each other,” Gris said.
According to sophomore Gloria Jeruchim, learning a dance is a long and strenuous process and it takes a lot of cleaning and perfecting. The team starts by learning the choreography one dance at a time, then captains assign spots and go through all of the dances and polish them. During practice, the music gets stopped every time a move needs to be worked on, and the team goes through the correct motions.
Though mainly student-led, dance team coach Elianna Bernstein (‘16) worked to ensure that everything went smoothly in the practices leading up to the performance.
“I try to make sure that everyone knows to come to practice, and make sure that everyone’s committed,” Bernstein said. “There weren’t too many issues with that, but I think that’s a big priority, just showing up and having a good attitude.”
Going into her first performance, Jeruchim still had nerves, despite the constant practice leading up and her knowledge of the dance moves.
“I think I can say this on behalf of the team when I say that everybody was super nervous,” Jeruchim said. “And I think we all had to get through that.”
Even with the team’s nerves going into the performance, Gris was happy with how far the team has come and grown. According to Gris, the captains work to make dance a supportive and enthusiastic group, allowing for them to appear more united while performing, and Gris saw that in the team’s performance.
“I was really proud of our team, the new members learned it really quickly, and did an amazing job,” Gris said. “So I was just really proud of everybody, and I was glad it went well.”
