Dance team stomps competition in Nationals

The NYU Purple and White Dance team carried a national championship trophy home to New York last weekend after taking its act to Daytona Beach, Fla. to compete in the National Dance Alliance (NDA) National Championships.

Accustomed to performing much of the year in front of near empty stands at Coles Sports Center, the Violet dancers avenged its fifth-place finish last year with a stunning showing all weekend, winning the title by a large margin of 0.5 points.

The Violet dancers ended the preliminary competition on Thursday in first place out of all 26 teams and kept that momentum going into Friday, as they defeated the University of Central Oklahoma for the title.

"We really wanted it," senior co-Captain Carolyn Comparato said. "We were excited and had worked so hard. Especially as seniors, we wanted to go out with a bang."

Performing a self-choreographed "New York, New York" theme, the dancers wore pleather pants and black halter tops with silver and red sequins spelling out "I [heart] NY." The music for the 2-minute-13-second performance began and ended with Frank Sinatra, then moved into music with harder bass and beats in between, including Brooklyn Bounce, the Notorious B.I.G. and Propeller Heads.

"Initially we had a hard time capturing it," senior co-Captain Wendy Garofoli said, in reference to the theme. "We didn't want to make it look like we were capitalizing on the tragedy, but we all felt such a connection to the city. It was a nice way to make our own little tribute."

The team's journey began way back in August as it attended a summer camp in Myrtle Beach, S.C. During this four-day camp, the Violets danced for almost 11 hours a day and learned five different routines. Out of those five, one was designated to be their performance routine, which, if done well, would earn the team a bid to nationals. The team succeeded and was given the NDA bid.

From then on, the girls focused on their April national competition.

"We spent four hours a day practicing over spring break and came back early from winter break as well. The team deserves this so much," Comparato said.

The team practices four days a week, for approximately three hours a day. The dancers are also encouraged to go to the gym on their own and take any kind of outside dance classes. This intense workout schedule is representative of their dedication.

"We don't have to do this," Comparato said. "We do it because we love it, and I think that was really evident this year."

The competition is broken down into three divisions based on the size of the school's sports program: IA, I and II. Competing in Division II, the girls had high hopes.

"After missing third place by .01 last year, I thought this was going to be our year," Comparato said. "I feel this was the best team ever. We only had four new girls and everyone adjusted well and worked hard."

They were excited and anxious going into the competition, but after their first-place finish in the preliminaries, nervousness struck.

"It really didn't sink in," Garofoli said. "People kept telling us not to get cocky, but we weren't cocky at all. In fact we got nervous. We're so used to pulling ourselves up, it was weird to have to maintain our score."

But they did just fine, winning first place by a large margin. The judging is out of 10 points, based on three major categories: palm, jazz and hip-hop.

Palm entails strong, sharp arm movements, jazz includes leaps and jumps, and hip-hop is funk. Higher scores are based on harder elements done correctly, formation, energy and completion of moves.

"No performance is ever perfect," Comparato said. "But I feel like we peaked at nationals. We've never done better. It was a great routine."

The team is still very shocked about the results.

"I don't think anything hit until Saturday night when we returned to New York with this huge trophy," Garofoli said. "It's very surreal, but we're incredibly excited."

"We definitely deserved it," she said.213,0,1