Traditionally, Red Rhythm goes to competition with pom, military, and high kick routines.

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However, the team is opening up and diversifying to a prop and contemporary routine, in addition to their pom and military routines.

“This year we added two new styles to our platform of dances we’re bringing to contest season this year,” Red Rhythm Director Nicole Nothe said. “We got prop and contemporary. These are new to us but i think this is a great opportunity for red rhythm to grow, especially in contemporary because in the past we’ve done precision based routines, high kick, military and pom have been consistently our routines so this is an opportunity for us to step out of our comfort zone and learn something new.”

Many may remember Red Rhythm’s traditional hoop routine at halftime during football games. The team is reusing this dance for their prop routine.

Senior Lieutenant Maija Brandish believes that this will help the team be more prepared for competition.

“We’re doing a prop dance, which is new for competition season but it’s basically our hoop performance from football season,” Brandish said. “I think that’ll be really nice for the team because we get to take our football performance and turn it into a competition dance, that way we’ll be more prepared because we’ve been working lot a lot longer.”

Brandish also thinks that diversifying in dance styles will help the team grow in their skills.

“I think it helps our team members overall as dancers,” she said.  “It makes us more versatile like we can do different styles of dance whereas in past years we’ve usually done pom and military. This year we’re doing pom, military, plus the two others. So we’ll have more like skills, we’re learning new skills for contemporary and I think we’ll just be better dancers overall.”