Some take part in Fine Arts, but junior Rylie Keagy takes part in dance.
Keagy has been dancing since between the ages of two and three alongside being in Lioneers.
“I know my first recital was when I was three, but I can’t remember the time difference. But my parents put me in it. I don’t know the exact reason. But I know that my mom used to dance at that studio when she was younger and she really liked it. And my dad’s family was more into sports, but my mom was like, ‘No, she’s going to be a dancer,’ so I’m glad that she put me in it. It’s not difficult at all being a lioneer here. If you have experience in dancing, It’s just fun. Honestly, that’s how I see the team. Like there’s nothing there’s no difficulties with it. There’s no hardships, we all get along really well because we all just share the love of dancing with each other and it’s just a fun thing to do. I get that we do like actual dancing for basketball because we perform it but football is just fun, just something everyone enjoys,” Keagy said.
Keagy also takes part in the Horseshoe yearbook.
“I knew I really liked designing stuff, I liked being creative, I knew I liked taking photos like getting my photo taken and taking photos of other people. But I didn’t know a lot about how to make stuff or how to write a caption. I wasn’t good at writing captions that can be difficult sometimes for some people, and everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses. But I just wanted to learn more about it and try it out. So I tried that out in junior high, and there wasn’t a staple like classwork. We kind of just were like thrown into it. So I did enter the Intro to Pub class my freshman year, and that helped me out so much because I feel like I’m so much stronger in each aspect now,” Keagy said.
According to Keagy, the best thing about dance is the different genres.
“With the studio that I’m at, don’t, we don’t do a lot of solos. We mostly do group kind of stuff. But there’s little stuff that we each are like good and I’m personally a turner. I love turning every time. But actually the opportunity to try out different styles of it because I don’t think people realize how much variety of everything that there is. Yeah, there’s a lot in dance,” Keagy said.
While Keagy dances, the hardest part of dance is learning the strengths and weaknesses of others.
“You come in and get different choreographers and you have to adapt to how they want to teach. And when you know how you like something, I think it’s so difficult to try to teach under somebody else who has different views or dance with other people who aren’t as strong in ways when you would rather be doing something else. Yeah, but in terms of like, actually dancing, I think the most difficult thing is that it’s difficult. I think the most difficult thing in terms of that would be getting a lot of not getting along but like being able to see in sync with people. For sure. Timing is what really matters. Being in sync with everybody. And in the nicest way possible. We argue with each other a lot over what the correct counts are. But it happens,” Keagy said.
Keagy enjoys a mix of lyrical. Lyrical dance is a mix of jazz and ballet.
“I tend to be very sharp, hitting but I love ballet. Ballet is my favorite. I was on a team in Pittsburgh until I was injured and it was for sure Kenny ballet of America. And Cecchetti is like the Russian ballet or for what it was like in state it wasn’t Pittsburgh, because they have one state. And then you have a convention in the summer for everybody to come to, but specifically for the one in Pittsburgh. We got to perform at a bunch of places it included auditions, obviously to get on the team. But there were scholarships and I auditioned. I was the youngest in the age division and won first place. It was a scholarship and I would think that would be my biggest accomplishment within dance,” Keagy said.
