The Whitney Young Guys and Dolls Dance Company recently competed in Dance Chicago on November 4th, at the Athenaeum Theater. Dance Chicago is a series of dance showcases for dance companies and schools. This past Saturday, Dance Chicago hosted its annual Dance Slam Competition. The competition is judged by audience members who provide ratings for choreography, technique and production on their ballots. Scores are then tallied and announced within a few weeks. Since it is based off of audience, Dance Slam is more viewed as a popularity contest but for Guys and Dolls, it is more about enjoying themselves and putting on a performance that they worked so hard on.

Each year, the piece that Whitney Young performs is choreographed by a guest choreographer. This is a great opportunity for the pre-professional dancers to work with someone experienced in dance and be exposed to different styles of dance from professional choreographers. This year, the dancers worked with native Cuban dancer, Michel Rodriguez, to create the piece titled Our Mambo. New members had a great time experiencing Dance Chicago for the first time and the guest choreographer.

“I was excited to perform the piece and it was fun to learn from Michel, I can’t wait for the second semester guest choreographer,” said Maddie Mariani ‘18.

“I performed in pieces from my company outside of school for Dance Chicago before and I was happy to be able to perform with my new team as well,” Lucy Hoying ‘21.

Currently, the company is preparing choreography for our company concert, Up Close and Personal. You can see Our Mambo in this show on January 10th and 11th.