By Staff
LOVING IT Lamar School Dance Team members Juliet Howarth, left, Charlotte Williams and Amanda Bridges work on their hip-hop moves Wednesday at the Meridian Community College Fitness Center as they prepare for football season this fall. Photo by Paula Merritt/The Meidian Star
By Steve Gillespie / staff writer
June 6, 2002
Even though school is out for the summer, members of the Lamar School Dance Team are already working hard in preparation for next football season.
While the school has had dance teams in the past, it didn't last year. Students interested in a dance team resurrected the idea this year.
The new dance team is composed of about 25 middle school and high school students. The team is under the direction of Janna Denney.
This week, the team is training at a workshop in the fitness center of Meridian Community College under the leadership of Stephen Boss, 19, from Montgomery, Ala., who is teaching members hip-hop.
Denney said MCC cheerleader Heather Goodwin also will rehearse with the team this summer. Denney said she plans to have one more workshop, if not two.
Denney and Karen Rush, mother of one of the Lamar School Dance Team members, met Boss at a recent dance competition in Atlanta hosted by Dance Educators of America.
Boss won the overall talent award and first place in the category of hip-hop and lyrical dance.
Boss is leaving for New York in August for a workshop and rehearsal that will end in an off-Broadway production. He has a dance scholarship to Chapman University in Orange, Calif.
This week, he has inspired members of Lamar's dance team. The dancers learned that Boss started to dance as a child by imitating people he saw on television.
Rush's daughter, Callie, 10, will enter the sixth grade in the fall. She looks forward to performing hip-hop at middle school and high school football games.
Callie and fellow dance team member Ally Anne Phillips said they learned this week that hip-hop requires more stretching and work than they thought it would.
Another team member, Andrea McLelland was a dance team captain three years ago at Lamar. She said the dances the team is working on now are completely different from those in the past.