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Ad space is limited and is taken on a first~come, first—serve basis. Contact the Business Manager at business@ technewsiit.com for more information. LOCAL 8 NATIONAL ADVERTISERS To place an ad, contact us via email at business@technewsiit.com. campus@technewsiit.com TechNews ,| Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 New Velocity presents annual dance showcase Shriram Inhalagan COPY EDITOR IIT’s dance group New Velocity showcased their annual dance performance on Friday, April 3, 2015. The show was an hour- 'Iong series of dances featuring a wide range of genres from hip-hop and contemporary to pop. It consisted of around 14 songs; New Ve— locity members performed 13 of them while one song was performed by another IIT dance group called Love To Dance (LTD), who made a special appearance. The show took place in the Hermann Hall auditorium and one could see the posters for the showcase on the major posting areas around campus the week prior. The attendance at the event was mostly by friends and family of the dancers that were part of the show. One could question the appreciation of an art form at IIT just by glancing at the number of people that showed up. The auditorium was only half filled with about 75-100 people turning up. Is dance an under—appreciated form of expres- sion at IIT or did students have a lot of home- work piled up this week? Whatever the reason be, the show definitely demanded more audi- ence, purely for their quality of dance alone. Speaking to the president of New Velocity, Andrea Rivera, an architecture un- dergraduate student, we learn about how di- business@technewsiit.com verse New Velocity really is. She claims that the goal of the group is to unite for a common pas- sion, dance, and there is no need to have prior experience or talent of any sort to be a part of this. LTD is another group that performs every year and it is a group that started off alongside New Velocity but they are more advanced and have auditions for people to join them, where— as New Velocity doesn’t have any auditions for students to clear. Pretty much anyone can join the group and start dancing. The goal of the group, according to Rivera, is to bring together different people from different backgrounds, train as a team, choreograph as a team, and give the best annual performance they can. The other annual event, which happens in the fall semester, is a flash mob, followed by recruit— ing more members before eventually choreo— graphing ahead of their spring show. When asked about how passion- ate fellow students are about dance and stage shows, Rivera had this to say: “It’s definitely a growing thing when it comes to passion, and I strongly encourage people who like to dance to come join us and spend time as a team.” After Rivera graduates, she hopes to be a guide/men— tor for the group and would like to oversee the workings of the organization. The current ob— jective is to get more people involved in dance at HT and have more students join New Veloc- business©technewsiit.com ity. To be passionate about dance is one thing; to actually choreograph a song, practice with your team, and perform under lights on stage is quite another. 30, Illinois Tech, put on your danc- ing shoes and sign up to dance the night away. The group practices mostly in the newly-ac— quired multipurpose mirror room at Keating and previously did have practices at Hermann Hall. Speaking of the mirror room, Rivera thanked Sonia Kamdar who worked closely with SGA to get the mirror room proposal approved after repeated requests from 33rd Street productions, LTD, New Velocity, and the Mixed Martial Arts club. This room now functions as a multi- purpose room and the clubs take turns practic- ing in this room at Keating. Rivera and others had trouble getting this project out of the way in terms of approval and that’s where Kamdar came in, speeding the process up by talking to the board from a student’s perspective. Rivera expressed disappointment that the organiza- tion had some trouble financing the showcase, but she hopes that this year’s showcase would help them out financially in terms of funding from the university and also drawing more dance enthusiasts to the group. Photo courtesy of Andrea Rivera business@technewsiit.com