IU Essence dance team to appear on BET

Out of hundreds of teams that sent in audition tapes, two were chosen to perform during Black Entertainment Television’s Revamped competition. One was from IU.

The IU Essence hip hop dance team placed second at BET’s Spring Bling Revamped competition March 28 in Riviera Beach, Fla. The Spring Bling special began airing on BET on Thursday and will continue through Saturday.

Arbara Rogers, an IU alumna attending graduate school in Indianapolis, came down during the week before the competition to critique the team. Rogers said better preparedness and critiques helped IU Essence advance as far as they did.

“This year, we knew what they were looking for,” Rogers said.

This was the second year IU Essence has auditioned for Revamped. Last year the team made it to the second round of auditions.

According to BET.com, Revamped is considered one of the most popular shows at Spring Bling and consists of two competing dance groups, adding their own twist to one of the most popular current music videos.

Two rounds of competition will air for Revamped. The first aired Thursday and the second will air at 4:30 p.m. Saturday on BET.

This year, the first round of the competition required dance teams to mimic Beyonce’s music video “Single Ladies.” But because IU Essence has a co-ed group of dancers, they were given the opportunity to choose a song to which to dance. The team chose the song “Freeze” by Chris Brown and T-Pain.

For the next round, the dance teams had less than 24 hours to prepare a routine to D.J. Unk’s song “Show Out.” Celebrity judges who critiqued the dances included former Destiny’s Child member, LaToya Luckett and female rapper, Trina.

IU Essence was founded in 1995 by Taprena Augustine and was the only African-American hip-hop dance crew on the IU-Bloomington campus, according to the IU Essence Dance Web site, www.indiana.edu/~essence/.

The team has tryouts once a semester and, in the past, has taken as many as 30 people. Those who audition are given two hours to learn a dance, after which they perform in front of current Essence members, Rogers said.

Last year, eight members of Essence were chosen to perform at Spring Bling. This year, six of the 14 members were selected. The team had tryouts and chose three men and three women to perform.

After they were selected to perform, the dance team set to work finding ways to earn money for their trip to Florida. The team went to various businesses, campus organizations and family members asking for donations.

“We had basically a week to collect money,” Rogers said. “There was some money left over from old donations, and we had one grant from last year.”

Back stage, the IU Essence team got to hang out with celebrities who performed during Spring Bling, including Busta Rhymes, Mims, Yung Joc, Rick Ross and Pretty
Ricky, Rogers said.

“Everybody liked Pretty Ricky,” Rogers said. “He was so nice.”

But Rogers’s favorite moment wasn’t meeting celebrities.

“My favorite moment was watching them perform,” Rogers said. “Last year we were in the crowd, but this year we were backstage watching our team.”

A mistake made during the audition had the team worried, but when the judges announced IU had made it to the top two, the room filled with cheers from the dance
team, Rogers said.

“When they said that IU made it to the top two, we were all screaming and crying,” she said. “It was amazing.”