High School Dance Team Audition Prep: The 4-Week Plan

Everything in this plan builds toward the judged day, when the combinations get run for the fourth time in front of a panel and the kicks are supposed to look like the first.

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Duration: 12 min · Equipment: A counter or chair back, socks or jazz shoes, a non-slip floor

Every day before anything else. Eight pliés in first and second, heels down, knees over the toes. Sixteen tendus front, side, and back from each foot, pressing the floor away. Sixteen slow relevés with two counts at the top. Eight développés to the side at whatever height keeps the hips square. Ten minutes a day is enough to make the technique line at the audition feel like a normal afternoon.

Only after the barre, with warm legs. Low lunge with the back knee down, forty-five seconds each side, then straighten the front leg for a flat-back hamstring fold. Figure-four on the floor, forty-five seconds each. Straddle sitting tall, then walking forward. Splits last, only as far as they honestly go today, hands on the floor. No bouncing, no partner pushing, no sitting in a split cold. Kick height comes from months of this, not from forcing it in the last week.

Hands on hips, standing leg straight, supporting heel pressing into the floor. Eight front kicks each leg from the hip, toe pointed, landing the foot softly where it started. Eight side kicks each leg with the hip turned out. Then all of it without the hand support, and then eight front kicks in a row alternating legs on the counts. The height is whatever keeps the standing leg straight and the chest up. Then hold a kick-line arm position (hands on the imaginary shoulders next to you) and kick eight on the counts without the shoulders moving.

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Stand in a strong stance. Hit a high V on one, low V on two, T on three, broken T on four, clasp on five, punch on six, and back to a clean neutral on seven and eight. Every position stops dead on the count with the arms straight, the wrists locked, and the shoulders down. Run it at half speed until every position is exact, then at tempo, then at tempo with the eyes off the mirror. Record eight counts and watch for arms that drift after they hit. In pom, the stop is the skill.

Duration: 12 min · Equipment: A sticky note at eye level, a smooth floor (not carpet, not slick tile)

Sixteen quarter-turns in relevé on two feet spotting the note. Eight single pirouettes from fourth, passé glued, arms in first, finishing in a clean fourth with the heel down. Doubles only when every single lands clean, and a clean single beats a messy double on any rubric. Both sides, with four extra reps on the weaker side. Then chaînés down the hallway spotting the end wall, small and fast, and back.

Sixteen sautés in first landing through the toes with the heels down and the knees bending, silent. Then chassé into a small split leap landing on a bent front knee, back foot arriving quietly. Five small, five bigger only if the landings stayed quiet. Height is added last. Acro, aerials, and tumbling stay in the studio or the gym with a coach and a mat, and most dance team rubrics do not score them anyway.

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Three short tutorial videos: one jazz, one pom, one hip hop. For each, set a four-minute timer, learn one eight-count counting out loud, then turn away from the mirror and run it three times full out to the music. At the end of the week, run all three back to back with no re-learning. The clinic hands a dancer a combination twice and then moves on. Practicing that moment is the most useful thing here.

Take the hip hop eight-count. Run it with the knees soft and the weight low, letting the chest and shoulders move with the beat instead of holding the ballet posture. Then run it with a bounce on every count, then run it with the bounce hidden inside the movement. The point is for the hip hop section to look like a different dancer than the pom section. Judges notice when a dancer does hip hop with pom arms.

Duration: 10 min · Equipment: Music, a chair as the judges’ table, the far wall as the top of the bleachers

Set a chair at the front. Run the jazz eight-count looking above the chair. Run the pom eight-count with the face turned up to the far wall as if the bleachers are full. Run the hip hop eight-count with attitude that matches the song. Record one of each and watch once. A gym is big, and the face has to reach the back of it.

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Run the three eight-counts as one piece, four times full out, thirty seconds between. Then the kick line, sixteen kicks on the counts. Run four should look like run one, including the face. Water between rounds and real food afterward. Game-day dance team is three routines and a halftime with no rest in between; this is the smallest version of it.

Once this week, in the real clothes: barre, warm stretch, the technique line down the hallway (kicks, chaînés, a leap), then one brand-new eight-count learned in four minutes and performed three times facing the chair, then the pom eight-count once. No stopping to fix anything. One note afterward from the dancer to themselves.

The two days before the judged day: a light barre, a warm stretch, one easy run of each combination at half energy, then stop. No new skills, no late nights, one full day off. Drink water, eat, sleep.

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Run the plan, then after the judged day, tell us which style felt strongest, which one the panel spent the most time on, and where the list landed. That is where the next plan starts.