Leaving a Legacy

The booming music playing over the speakers, the deafening cheering of the crowd, the pounding of feet against the floor. To the 30 to 40 teenagers moving to the beat, these are the happiest moments: stripped of Stuyvesant’s academic pressures and on stage or practicing in the Gibney Dance studio a few blocks away from the school.

This dance team, called Stuy Legacy, was founded in 2016 by Jordan Zhou (‘16), John Wen (‘16), Sorato Doken (‘16), and Peter Lee (‘18) to “take the Stuyvesant urban dance community to the next level,” according to senior and current Executive Director Kyle Tau, who has been a part of Legacy since its first season in the spring of 2016. “I decided to join because, during Stuy Squad freshman year, I was exposed to the school’s dance community,” Tau explained. Before coming to Stuyvesant, Tau was introduced to the foundational styles of urban dance by his eighth-grade teacher. “Annually, my eighth-grade math teacher makes a crew of a few of the eighth graders to put on a performance choreographed by him,” he said. Other than that, he fueled his interest in dance by watching YouTube videos and trying to copy the dances of other performers.

Tryouts for Stuy Legacy take place once in August and again in January for the fall and spring seasons respectively. “First, you warm up. […] Next, the choreography is taught. They usually teach one or two choreographies,” sophomore Min Sun Yu explained in an e-mail interview. “This is definitely the most nerve-wracking part of the experience because you end up worrying about two things: how well you’re retaining the moves they throw at you and how you look when you’re executing them.” Yu learned about Legacy when she was in seventh grade and had wanted to join since then. “Before joining Legacy, I did have some dancing background,” she said. “I started dancing in first grade with tap and then continued dancing until sixth grade. […] I did tap, ballet, jazz, and hip hop.” After discovering one of Legacy’s competition videos, Yu was intrigued by their coordinated moves. “The style of the choreography also seemed a lot more interesting than traditional ballet or jazz moves,” she said. Since then, and leading into high school, Yu dreamed of being on the team. She eventually tried out in her freshman year and was accepted.

Senior Tina Lin is another member of Legacy who had danced before joining the team. “I started ‘dancing’ when I moved down here to NYC in seventh grade and my friends introduced me to K-pop (EXO!),” she said. “I never considered trying dance before that, much less loving it. After I got into Stuy[vesant], I did SophFrosh SING! and SOS in freshman year and Stuy Squad in sophomore year before joining Legacy.” However, Tina Lin does not believe experience defines how good someone is at dancing or their likelihood of being accepted into the team. She explained, “The concept of ‘prior experience’ doesn’t apply because some people are naturally more spatially aware [and] controlled than others.”

Once students are accepted into the team, they attend practices, which occur once or twice a week near the beginning of the season, and three to six times a week before competitions. “In meetings, we either build on some of the foundations of dancing—grooving, isolation, etc.—learn more choreography, learn staging, or clean. It really depends on the time of the year,” Yu explained. Practices are led by the person who choreographed the piece. “Practices are always full of jokes because we are all friends but when it’s time to focus, we focus,” Tau said. “It’s always a happy environment because everyone has a passion for dance and we are sharing that passion together.”

The team is built on this shared passion and bond that connects each member like a family. However, they also have small rivalries and assessments of each other, like a family does. “[Though] there is a bit of competition between members, it only acts as motivation to work harder,” Yu said. “Usually, we critique each other to help each other grow, and we know not to take it the wrong way.” Tau added, “I think it’s the amount of time we spend dancing and sweating in a studio, and then getting food afterward that brings us together.”

On competition day, the team arrives on site in time for their tech time, which is a run through of the show. Because this practice is recorded, the dancers can monitor their performance afterward and fix any mistakes before the actual show.

Then, it is showtime. “For each competition, there are exhibition performances and competing performances. After all the teams perform, the judges do a showcase and then awards are announced,” Tau explained. The team has won many awards, including first place for the Boom Dance Competition and second place for Prelude NY 2018. Freshman Melody Lin remembered how she felt at her first competition, Reign or Shine. “After seeing everyone crying tears of joy and relief as well as sorrow [after the performance], I couldn’t help but burst into tears myself. As everyone hugged, cheered, and comforted each other, I took a step back to watch everyone and process everything that was happening in the room,” she said. “I remember thinking to myself, what did I ever do to deserve having this group of amazing and talented people in my life.” Melody Lin first discovered Legacy through social media and was motivated to join by watching the videos posted on the team’s social media accounts.

Behind this excitement during performances and award ceremonies, the dancers are still students who must fulfill their responsibilities of being a student at Stuyvesant. Because Legacy calls for high commitment, members must manage their time wisely. “Since it is a commitment we signed up for, we are informed that if we join, we will have at minimum one practice every week. In the end, time management is really the only answer in minimizing its interference with schoolwork,” Yu explained.

However, each dancer prioritizes schoolwork before extracurriculars. “Past members have even taken breaks from being on the team to focus on school,” Tau mentioned. Balancing schoolwork and extracurriculars is not easy, as Legacy competitions collide with schoolwork and other dancing showcases such as Stuy Squad. Tina Lin described how she tries to finish her schoolwork during free periods and in between practices. “If I love to do something, it is easy to put in the effort to [make] it work,” she said. Despite the overlapping commitments, most Legacy members annually participate in one or more dance crews in Stuy Squad. Since Legacy is a student-run team and not an official Stuyvesant club, school showcases allow members to experience a different side of performance: performing to show off their talents on the school stage rather than competing citywide.

When asked if they are thinking of continuing dance in the future, the most common answer among them was that it is just a hobby for now. “I definitely see myself dancing in the future,” Melody Lin said. “But I’m not sure if I’d do it as a career.” Yu agreed but held an optimistic view that she is open to the idea of having dance as a career option. “[Though] I haven’t really thought about me and dance in the future, I am not opposed to it becoming my full-time job,” Yu said. “If I [am] able to make money doing what I love, that would be the best thing one could ask for.” Similarly, Tina Lin stated that “it will definitely be a passion I hope to continue for as long as I can move.” No matter what the future holds, these young dancers are fulfilling the goals that the founders initially had of making “a connection between the growing youth community and the already-established collegiate [or] adult community,” according to Tau.

The founders of Legacy cleverly named the team to show this connection between youth and adult. “[The name represents] their mark on the school and the team’s future impact on the dance community,” Tau explained. “Stuy Legacy was named this way because they wanted this team to leave a ‘legacy.’ And they have. I hope even after I leave, Legacy will continue to have an impact on our school and the dance community.”