SU DanceWorks celebrates 40th anniversary with DanceWorks with the Stars

This upcoming Saturday, Syracuse University’s largest student-run dance organization is hosting its first DanceWorks with the Stars event.

The event, modeled after the TV series “Dancing with the Stars” will host 20 teams, each consisting of one DanceWorks member, who is considered the “pro” and is paired with a representative of a student organization. Tickets for the event sold out within the first 30 minutes, according to Co-Director Revati Mahurka.  

The team representing SU’s Club Boxing consists of DanceWorks member and “pro” Sami Carnahan and boxer Molly Rojas, who is an officer of Club Boxing. In preparation for Saturday’s competition, juniors Carnahan and Rojas have been practicing two to three hours a week for almost a month. 

Carnahan was initially worried about being the sole instructor and choreographer for their dance, especially since she is used to explaining steps and movements through professional dance terminology and technique to other seasoned dancers. 

“There’s a lot of language we use just in dance, and a lot of times that doesn’t go through to a lot of people,” Carnahan said. “But I feel like she [Rojas] has been able to pick up the choreography and movement so quickly, and she’s very determined through all of it.”

Carnahan and Rojas were randomly paired through the competition process, both students applying to DanceWorks to be a “pro” and a dancer, respectively. 

Carnahan has been dancing since she was just 3 years old, and this competition has granted her an opportunity to fulfill and share her passion for choreography.

“I’ve wanted to choreograph my own piece for so long,” she said. “I’d really like my work to be out there because I love choreographing, so I’m excited I get to do that with Molly.” 

Carnahan and Rojas will be dancing to Billie Eilish’s “Oxytocin,” chosen by Carnahan to bring “mystery and curiosity from the audience” that helped her choreograph her preferred style of jazz. 

Rojas has found that, despite having almost no experience in choreographed dancing, her extensive skill and passion for boxing have given her a leg up during the learning process. Rojas has been on the club team since her freshman year and hopes to win the competition for her beloved boxing team members. 

“When you’re in the ring and you’re sparring someone, you need to be constantly moving, and pivoting, and changing motion, and dance has a lot of that — you’re constantly moving in dance,” Rojas said. 

Rojas said that dancing has been a nice break from the physical blows her body takes while boxing. 

“It’s nice to be able to dance and not get hit in the head,” she said.

The team has taken a liking to learning each other’s sports through the time they’ve spent together, and hope that Rojas can teach Carnahan some of her boxing techniques after the competition. 

Carnahan and Rojas hope to win for their inherent competitiveness, Carnahan’s ability to showcase her choreography skills, Rojas’ club boxing team members, and foremost, for each other.  

Photo by Leah Cohn

Sami Carnahan (left) choreographed the dance to fit the style of jazz.

This lasting experience Carnahan and Rojas have had was not easily granted, since many students wished to be involved in the competition and represent their campus organization.

Co-director of DanceWorks, Ellie Cohen, shared that they received many more applications for the competition than they originally expected, with a total of 60 applications. 

“We were hoping for 10 [teams to apply] initially, over the summer. We were like, maybe 10, maybe we’ll have an intermission,” said Cohen. “But then so many people wanted to participate.” 

Cohen said due to the excess number of applications, the executive board had to refuse 40 students from participating in the competition. 

The executive board decided to prioritize 20 older applicants, granting the students the opportunity to participate in the competition before they graduate. Board members also wanted a diverse group of organizations from all disciplines of SU, according to Co-Director Revati Mahurkar. 

“We had a wide variety of orgs who applied, so we wanted to reflect that variety in our final decisions as well, so we were kind of just aware, we don’t want to do all sororities or all non-Greek life orgs, we just wanted to have somewhat of a mix,” she said.

Cohen and Mahurkar said they hope to continue this event as a new tradition of DanceWorks, despite having to put in far more effort into the planning of the event than they expected.

“I don’t think anyone of us thought this would be as much work as it actually is turning out to be, but since we have so much experience from putting on a show every spring — we know we have to reserve the space, we have to do a budget request and all the logistical things apart from picking out who’s actually going to be in the show,” said Mahurkar. 

DanceWorks has over 100 cast members, with 16 members assisting with team production. Executive board members: co-directors and seniors Mahurkar and Cohen, and co-producers and juniors Filip Piechowiak and Lexi Blank, have been planning this event since the beginning of the semester. 

All four executive board members have been dancing with the organization since their freshman year at SU, each seeking a way to continue their lifelong passion for dance.

Photo by Leah Cohn

Members of DanceWorks gather at the Barnes Center exercise studio to practice for the Spring showcase. 

They started brainstorming ways to celebrate the 40th anniversary of SU DanceWorks last June, and a campus-wide Dancing with the Stars seemed to fit the wants and needs of the organization and their friends who wanted to dance with the group without being a permanent member. 

“We usually only have one showcase a year and that’s in the spring in March, and throughout the year we don’t really do anything where the audience can get involved,” said Mahurka, “We were thinking it’d be cool if people could represent their orgs and then that’s a way to kind of get different orgs involved.” 

Their collective love for the “Dancing with the Stars” television show also fueled the passion that allowed this event to come to life. 

DanceWorks is also using this event to financially fund their organization, with the $1 pre-voting form fee, selling t-shirts at the show, ticket sales, and a raffle to win gift cards to Marshall Street businesses at the event. The event is also sponsored by The Standard at Syracuse, apartments open for leasing close to SU’s campus. 

The pre-show voting, which is open until midnight on Friday, has been sent out to friends and family by the dancers themselves. This will be factored in for the final scoring process, according to Mahurka.

The directors said that the final scores of each team will be a combination of the pre-show voting, voting by audience members in physical attendance and the scores given by the directors and producers, who are the official judges of the competition. 

Mahurkar says they have yet to decide how they will weigh each form of voting, though the judges’ votes will have the greatest influence on the team’s final scores.

The winning team will be awarded a prize for their organization, which has yet to be announced by the DanceWorks Executive Board.

The event will take place this Saturday at Schine Underground. Originally, the executive board hoped to host the event in the Goldstein auditorium for an audience capacity of 2,000. Due to the auditorium being unavailable on Saturday, the board decided the 300 seats available in Schine Underground would be the next best option.

With the limited in-person seating, Mahurkar said they are still working on accommodating all alumni, students abroad, and family and friends who wish to watch the performance virtually. They plan to use Instagram Live to livestream the performance. 

The executive board has not seen or been made aware of any details about the dances so far, though they have become “much more confident” knowing how excited and dedicated teams are to the rehearsal process leading up to the competition. 

“We didn’t expect it to be as big of a production as it’s going to be, and I feel so much better about it now,” said Blank.