America’s Best Dance Crew? Maybe not, but Double OC has caught the dancing bug and in the words of the team’s treasurer, Vanessa James, it’s “trying to spread dance all over this place!” Double OC, the newly established campus dance team and community service club was introduced to SUNY Old Westbury on September 8th 2010. The team consists of fifteen “Out of Control” dancers that are diverse in everything from their ethnicity’s to their style of dance (and yes, booty shaking is indeed one of these styles).
“We have people dancing ballet, we have jazz dancers, we have hip hop dancers, and we have sexy dancers. We have everything dancers”, says Estefania Jimenez, secretary of the team. Double OC is not to be confused with Old Westbury’s long standing dance team All the Right Moves. Double OC differs because it’s a club that exists in two entities. There’s the dance component, Out Of Control, and then there’s the community service outreach branch, Owning Our Community, combined they form the acronym OOC and create a dynamic like no other.
You can find Double OC on any given weekday night practicing, sometimes for hours on end, in the laundry room located in the Academic Village. Dusty floors, students in the midst of doing their laundry and for some that cold long walk back to the new side are just some of the major inconveniences of this practice space, but they have a lot of heart. James passionately expresses, “At the time we do not have a practice space, but we really want to dance. We are dancers, so we make it possible to dance anywhere.”
Just think of them as the little engine that could, if you will. Jaimie Hill-Anderson explains how the team came about, “Some of us did dance on the other team, but found that it didn’t comply with our needs. We wanted something that would be a higher skill level, teach us, and help us grow. We also wanted a team that would bond as well so by adding a community service component, you have a team that gets to interact together other than just in dance practice.”
So what has this team been up to? You might recall them dancing as Barbies in tutu’s during last fall’s Midnight Madness. As their debut performance, they made quite a statement and like the little engine they are, actually made all the tutus by hand under the direction of You Tube! Because they were a new club, SGA hadn’t cut them a budget yet so they worked with what they had. It took days to make the tutus, but it paid off. “It was the first time everybody saw us perform together and we killed it”, said team member Siara Arnette.
They’ve come a long way; today they have a budget and even have official OOC gear which they proudly wear around campus. Some of the team’s other performances include NYPIRG’s eco-friendly fashion show and the talent show last fall.
As far as Double OC’s community service work, they’ve tabled for HIV and the March of Dimes (also participating in the walk), but they went above and beyond this summer linking up with the Brownville Recreational Center in Brooklyn, NY. There, they practiced with a young inner city dance team and taught them some moves of their own. The team is looking forward to doing more community work and will be holding a community service interest meeting on March 17th at common hour, for anyone who would like to get involved. You do not have to dance to join OOC’s community service junction; so it’s really for everyone.
The team is making moves fast! They’ve been avidly preparing for Stony Brook’s Set It Off competition on March 17th. Tickets to the event are $6 and they are in the works of having a bus to take members of the Old Westbury community to the competition. LaQuan Miles, the teams P.R. Manager, goes into detail about Double OC week ,which is the first week in May, “There’s going to be a lot of programs; a lot of stuff with dance and culture. Not only dance, but there will even be poetry and art. There’s even a program because it’s the week before finals that gives everybody a chance to relax and take a couple of hours away from the stress to get massages, facials, and nails done.” Coming soon Double OC will also be collaborating with Step Tunes for an anticipated performance, as well.
When Ayana Gotay was asked what her favorite part about being a member of Double OC was she responded, “I love the unity and that we all mesh well together. Simply put, I just love the team.”
After a practice as they come together- sweaty faces, laughing, feeling like they’ve accomplished something, they shout their infamous chant “You down with OOC?! Yea, you know me!” and it leads one to believe… maybe America’s Best Dance Crew isn’t so far-fetched.