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From the waltzes to the hustles, BYU–Hawaii Ballroom Club made an impact during Culture Night

Members of the Ballroom Club.

Learning cooperation and coordination by teaching people to dance in pairs and working together as a precision team, said Ballroom Club members, are some of the unique opportunities to be gained by joining the club and performing at Culture Night. Although it doesn’t represent a specific country, Ballroom Club members said it was important to perform in Culture Night because dance is intertwined with culture and can be a culture itself.

“It may not be a culture in the traditional sense with a geographic area or specific people,” said Corbin Maciel, a sophomore studying biochemistry from Oregon. “Ballroom is a very unique culture to dance since dance is a big part of culture and dance can form its own culture.”

While Ballroom isn’t tied to one country or region, audience and performers said it is important to represent it in Culture Night. Damon Kumar, a senior from Fiji studying hospitality and tourism management and business, said, “Culture Night doesn’t have to be different countries with their own culture but should be open to any culture including hip hop and ballroom.”

Kumar said he preferred the second night of Culture Night with the Ballroom performance as being “entertaining and exciting to watch, especially all the spinning lifts.”

Hailey Steinagel, a sophomore studying history from Florida, explained, “[Ballroom] plays a big part in European culture [because] a lot of courtship is in ballroom. It’s not really any sort of country in there, but there is merit in it because of the various cultures it reflects.”

Performers also described the unique opportunities Ballroom Club provided them compared to other clubs.

“You’re with a partner the entire time which makes it a bit different from the other dances because you have a two-person team within a major team,” said Brec Jorgenson, a freshman from Utah studying human resource.

“You are a lot more focused on formations and you have to lead a girl the entire time and she has to follow,” Jorgenson continued. “It’s the closest to an American culture dance, beside hip hop, that was out that night. It’s got a style of its own.”

Fellow Ballroom dancer Maciel said, “The approach was very formal,” when compared to the other clubs he’d participated in on campus. 

“We still had a lot of fun learning and doing the dances, but it took more coordination between partners,” he said. “You couldn’t just focus on yourself. You had to pay attention to the other person to make sure you weren’t out of sync.”

Writer: J. Eston Dunn