Hamline University’s Dance Bootcamp is a student org that promises to provide intensive, thorough dance courses for students who want to learn to dance. Dance Bootcamp’s president, junior Izabella George, mentioned that the group’s origin started in class between four friends.

“Four of us had met in the ‘Korean Through Movement’ class and I am a theater and dance education major, but my kind of goal is to be a dance teacher for the rest of my life,” George said. “So they wanted to learn some dance, I wanted to teach them dance. So we just had, I think we had a lot of fun with that, and then we kind of wanted to open it up to more people.”

George says that Dance Bootcamp is meant to decrease the ‘barrier of entry’ for dance, and that it is open to anyone.

“Absolutely [it is open to everyone],” George said. “We have some dancers that are very challenging and so that’s why we tried to add the bootcamp thing. Yeah, I definitely pushed them to their limits. Like Kyrin over here. He has a couple of years of dance experience while the other two people that we started out with were very much beginners.”

Junior Kyrin Sturdivant, Vice-President of Dance Bootcamp, spoke about his theatre background and how he got involved with Hamline’s dance program.

“I started doing plays and like musical theater in high school,” Sturdivant said. “And then once I came here I found out that they have a dance ensemble on campus. And I auditioned and got in and kind of went forward and like being a part of it.”

George mentioned the groups’ intention to add new members and to introduce the fundamentals of dance to an age group less likely to start dance for the first time.

“Yes, [we are] definitely adding new members,” George said. “I’m probably finding more performance opportunities to kind of show our hard work. I feel like a lot of people [believe that] if you didn’t get into dance at like three, then you just kind of like are off the dance track. So I think Dance Bootcamp is trying to be an opportunity for people to kind of rediscover dance.”

George mentioned that she’s been involved in dance programs for a long time, and she hopes to get students of any year involved, emphasizing that dance as an art is open to any age group.

“I’ve been [doing dance] since I was three,” George said. “I say I saw it when I was three years old and I told my mom I wanted to sign up in three year old language and then stuck with it and now I’m in school for it.”

Dance Bootcamp can be contacted at dancebootcamp@hamline.edu. No performances have been booked yet, but there are plans on doing so soon. Sturdivant and George had a small performance at the Spring Student Org fair, and they hope to make more appearances at other Hamline events.