Freestyle Dance Team

A new dance team is being started at the University of West Georgia. Santi Nilo, a California native and  student at UWG is the president of the dance team. While exploring his new found home in Carrollton he noticed the university was missing one thing that played a huge role in his California life, dancing.  

 “When I came out here there weren’t really any legitimate dance crews,” said Nilo. “ This culture doesn’t really know about dancing all that much. So, I wanted to bring that culture here.” 

 Nilo saw the opportunity to broaden the dance culture at UWG and took advantage of it by starting an organization through the Center for Student Involvement Office, and it is named Freestyle Dance Team.  

 “My biggest inspiration was that there was not a dance team here so I said ‘Why not start a team then’ and started it,” said Nilo. 

 The team is centered around the teachings of hip-hop and freestyle dancing, as well as members sharing different styles of dance. The team prides themselves on learning from all types of dance styles and not limiting themselves to just one style.  

 “We do sessions and try to get our members to freestyle, and that’s how I came up with the name of the group,” said Nilo.  

 The Freestyle Dance Team began this semester and has meetings every Friday where they share their different styles of dancing. The team welcomes members of all experience levels and currently has twelve members. Currently, members of the team have no fees or dues to pay.  

 “We do collect money for shirts or hats if they are wanted, but currently there are no membership fees,” said Nilo. 

 Nilo does have future goals of becoming a competitive team, but wants to focus on having fun and making people comfortable with dancing for now.  

 “There is not that many people who like dancing out here, or even know about it, so I just want to warm up people to the idea of dancing,” said Nilo. “Then once I get more people in the organization and start teaching them. That’s when I would like to move forward and try to get into competitive dancing.” 

 There are no public performances planned for the school or student body yet for this new organization. Although, Nilo would like to see that happen in the future for the Freestyle Dance Team.