MP dance team performs at home basketball games

BY ANDY KRUTSINGER

Mt. Pleasant News

Fans of the Mt. Pleasant basketball teams have been delighted this season with performances from the school?s dance team during intermisisons this season.

The MPCHS dancers have been performing at every varsity halftime, and will continue to do so throughout the year.

The team, coached by Nikole Keaster, who is also the cheerleading coach for MPCHS, has two dances that received Division 1 ratings at the Iowa state dance competition earlier this month.

The first routine, the one performed during last Friday night?s boys? game against Ft. Madison, is a novelty jazz routine called, ?Underneath the Tree.? The Panthers performed that dance on the Thursday evening of the state dance weekend at Hy Vee Hall in Des Moines.

Another routine the team will be performing is their pom routine, which is called ?Imagination Infatuation.? The team performed this dance on the Friday morning of the state dance competition. Keaster says the girls had to get up extra bright and early for their 8:30 a.m. start.

Although the dance team has a lot of overlap with the cheerleading squad, the two teams aren?t quite the same, and cheerleading practices are different than dance team practices.

The dance team will be hosting a dance clinic for kindergarten through fifth graders in January. The next time the dance team will be performing will be this Friday, Dec. 18, at the girls? home basketball game against Ft. Madison.