Ballroom

One of the most unexpected - and yet most exciting - experiences I stumbled upon at Tufts was joining the Ballroom Dance Team. At the beginning of my second year, a couple of my roommates and I attended the Ballroom GIM (General Interest Meeting) on a whim because a couple of them were interested in dance. I had never danced before but I was desperate for social interaction (we were crawling out of the COVID era) so I agreed to go. The older students on the team taught us a bit of foxtrot and I got to meet some nice people who I ended up being friends with for years. I think the structure of Ballroom meshed well with my engineering brain and I liked the idea of having a physically expressive outlet. I started attending lessons with the team and getting more involved throughout my sophomore year, and even started competing at a couple competitions in the Boston area during the spring semester.

Before long I was considered an "Oldie": someone who had been on the team long enough to start teaching new dancers steps, figures, and technique. I never really considered myself deeply knowledgeable - there is so much to know about Ballroom and I had only scratched the surface - but I knew enough to help out here and there. By the time my senior year rolled around, I had brought (or more accurately, dragged) an additional roommate into the Ballroom community and it really felt like home to me.

Leadership

The team is managed by an executive board of undergraduate students, which is then led by two co-captains. Around when my junior year was wrapping up, I started seeing some improvements I wanted to make to the team - particularly on the technical side of things - which drew me to applying for the Co-Captain role. I was voted in by the rest of the team and my Senior year I worked as one of the co-captains alongside a board of good friends.

In that role, I significantly reorganized the team website and redesigned key pages to make important information more accessible to members. My goal was to be able to answer their most common questions with "check the website" and have it answered within one mouse click. In my opinion, we achieved that! Critical information like when, where, and what lessons were was front and center; e-list subscription was not far further, along with a myriad of contact options; detailed directions to our dance space included embedded Google maps pins and visual aids.

As co-captains, we fostered a large year of newcomer dancers, who found themselves making up the vast majority of the next year's e-board.

Showdance

Another important part of the Tufts Ballroom Team is Showdance, where various choreographers work throughout the year to put together group performances for student-led shows and events. The team even puts on its own show in the spring called the Spring Showcase.

I was fortunate enough to choreograph two pieces my senior year and participate in one more! It was a unique experience full of planning, instruction, and artistic expression.