A dance squad or dance team, sometimes called a pom squad or drill team, is a sport team that participates in competitive dance. In a routine, a squad will incorporate a specific dance style (i.e. hip-hop, jazz or lyrical), technical work (tumbling, leaps, turns, kicks, splits, jumps) and, depending on the routine, pompon and/or cheers. A pom squad slightly differs from a regular dance squad in that it uses pom-poms in all its dance routines, whilst a regular dance squad may or may not do pom work in a dance routine. Dance teams are also popular in performance dance, especially at sporting events, most commonly performing during the pre-game and halftime periods (and, in a number of cases, on the sidelines) of football and basketball games.
Dance is a highly competitive sport. Youth/association, middle school, high school, collegiate, all-star, and professional teams compete on local, regional, state, national, and international levels. Teams are judged on a number of criteria including form, team unison, showmanship, precision of motions, jumps, leaps, turns, choreography, enthusiasm, and, in the case of pom squads, visual use of poms-poms. Pom squads are like cheerleading or dance, but they use poms. (pom-poms). Pom squads also use kicklines in their routines, after they set down their poms, or choose to hold them during the kickline. A kickline routine is a routine of kicks, which cheerleaders also use. High kicks, fan kicks, low kicks, and kicks that go to their waist. Pom squads regularly compete in competitions, and perform at sporting events. Sometimes, a cheerleading squad will perform a pom routine for a competition.
Read more about Dance Squad: Overview, Tryouts, Competitions
Famous quotes containing the words dance and/or squad:
“The gentlemen [at a ball], as they passed and repassed, looked as if they thought we were quite at their disposal, and only waiting for the honour of their commands; and they sauntered about, in a careless indolent manner, as if with a view to keep us in suspense.... I thought it so provoking, that I determined in my own mind that, far from humouring such airs, I would rather not dance at all.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on twenty-four-hour call to any spot on the globe where dispute and conflict may erupt.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)