Halftime performances are just like competitions; fun, exciting and things can go wrong unexpectedly. That’s what happened at the December 11th Junior Varsity Boys Basketball game during their halftime performance: their performance music turned off.

For sophomore Macey McCormack, a JV Sensations member, her worst nightmare came true revealing the teams true colors under a stressful unanticipated situation.

“[You] kind of jump for a second because you’re like, ‘Oh wait, what’s the next count,’” McCormack said.

Count meaning the place everyone should be at in the dance to insure that they are all in unison and on the same page. Dancers will often count out loud as a team when the music turns off and even when they have music. This keeps the dance smooth and aligned to each other’s roles. However, even when counting, not having music can still throw a dance completely off.

“It definitely throws us all off because we’re like, should we keep going? Or should we stop and start over? [Our coaches] tell us just keep going. If it happens in a competition, you keep going,” McCormack said.

The JV Sensations music eventually turned on and they finished their dance accomplishing their goal of staying together despite an unwanted complication.

This technical difficulty, though not frequent, still happens no matter what level a dancer performs at. Freshman and varsity sensations member Alexis Barnes recalled a time where this unanticipated technological error occurred during her studio competition season with Dance Connection.  

“I was in third grade at a competition and it was my solo and the first 10 seconds of the dance the music completely cut out. I had to go through the rest of the two minute dance with people trying to clap their hands and sing along and it was horrible,” Barnes said giggling at the memory.

When a mistake like this happens there is a recurring theme in the dance world. Just keep going.

“[We] just keep going and moving through our performance like we were trained to do,” Barnes said.  

Besides music turning off, there are other factors that can contribute to the teams performance. Things like the slickness of the gymnasium floor and practice conditions as described by junior Varsity Sensation, Gabrielle Ottinger.

“It’s really hard trying to practice in the hallways or in the gym because the floors are always so slippery. So a lot of people just slide everywhere,” Ottinger said.

The Sensations are still continuing to overcome their practice conditions (as they have been for years) and practicing more intensely with their first competition and first basketball game halftime performance in the books. They are now practicing some mornings as well as after school to perfect their craft and bring a top notch performance to their next competition taking place in Chicago over winter break.

Sensations Twitter: https://twitter.com/FHC_Sensations