The first ever Merge took place on May 4 at Round Rock High School (RRHS) in which various junior varsity dance teams from all over came together to present multiple dances. This year, the tradition began with Warrior Pride, McNeil Sapphires, Round Rock Dragon Pride and Cedar Ridge Nobility. The dancers practiced for months in order to create a lasting memory of their last performance for this year.

In order to finalize their dance and have it show ready, the teams gathered together the day before the performance to practice spacing and movements. Immediately after school, students rushed to RRHS to quickly polish the dances and have them nailed down. The dancers practiced entrances and exits, and ran through all of their routines to fix any mistakes.

“I think the practice was hard because at one point we were put on the dance floor all together, so there were a good eighty kids dancing all together which made it hard because you had to make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to do,” Florie Sambuis ‘20 said. “Also, we were still changing some parts of the dance even on the night before the show, so that was a bit stressful.”

Before the show, the teams gathered together and placed their left foot into a circle to symbolize unity among their groups. The directors went around saying the things they were proud of, which generated a lot of excitement. Finally, the dancers got dressed for their opening piece, which featured performers from all companies. After each dance, the students changed into their next costume, which gave them about five minutes to get ready in between numbers.

“Transitioning between the different dances was the most difficult because there wasn’t much time in between each dance,” Shannon Chao ‘20 said. “Overall, just performing our dances was fun and cool because we were able to see everyone’s dance styles.”

Warrior Pride performed various dances including their award winning pieces. To start out the show, all of the JV teams gathered into the gym and struck their pose to kick off their opening dance. Afterwards, the girls quickly dressed into their black cargo pants and white baseball jersey for hiphop to the fast paced song, Crickets. In addition, the dancers had to learn a new jazz dance to Sweet Disposition which would greatly feature the seniors. They began their dance with an intricate lift and a solo section to emphasize that this would be the last time they performed. To end the night, Warrior Pride performed contemporary to Light me Up in which the dancers used flowy maroon skirts to highlight their movement.

“[Performing these dances is] something that’s never happened before, and we’ve never had all the teams go together so it was fun dancing with them,” Sambius said. “I had a lot of fun because we were able to create really good bonds during the performance, and we all just love each other.”

At the end of the performance, seniors were recognized by receiving flowers and a special shout out to their for their hard work and dedication to the team. As this was the last dance they would ever perform with their high school team, many of the students were sad, yet happy that they were able to dance one last time together with their team.

“It was really bittersweet. After that Thursday night we were all kind of ready for the show to be over just because we were all very stressed and it was a nice reliever of that stress,” Mikayla Harris ‘18 said. “But it was also sad. It had been four years of my life and it was the end of it, I had my last circle-up and our last big team rituals that we all did together, it was bittersweet.”