Block Crew celebrates third annual spring showcase

Block Crew held its third annual showcase on Saturday, March 30, in Camp Concert Hall in the Booker Hall of Music. The show lasted about two hours, featuring 27 dance pieces as well as offering free admission and food.

According to its Facebook page, Block Crew was founded in 2010 and is an “urban dance team that focuses on the bridge between music and dance. ... Over the years, Block Crew has evolved to focusing more on urban hip hop." 

In its showcase, Block Crew performed multiple genres of dance, including urban hip-hop, K-pop and old school hip-hop. Members of the team choreographed each dance. 

In order to prepare for their big night, they held two two-hour official practices each week, in addition to each member dedicating an additional four or more hours outside of practice.

Junior and choreography team leader Violet Zeng said that, in her position of leadership, she had felt a sense of responsibility to her team members to help them prepare for the showcase.

"I am most thankful to all of our members," Zeng said. "As I said at the curtain call, even though leadership helped set up the showcase, it would have never been successful without our members."

Eljoy Tanos, junior and a member of the Block Crew choreography team, said he had been responsible for teaching members the group piece since his sophomore year. 

The opening piece of the showcase was taught by Zeng and the last piece of the show was taught by Tanos, along with Block Crew member Paige Li. The choreography team is responsible for leading big group pieces. 

However, there were more than 20 other dances performed at the showcase. These dances were led by members who were not on any leadership team, Tanos said. 

“Not only were they responsible for teaching, cleaning the choreography and set up stage directions and theme, but they were also the ones who had to recruit people to join their piece themselves," Tanos said. "Whenever the audience cheered, I could not help but to feel proud of the amount of effort all of my teammates put into making our showcase happen.”

Tanos said Block Crew had performed at Camp Concert Hall this year because when it previously had held its showcase at The Pier in Tyler Haynes Commons, there had not been enough room to perform the bigger group pieces or for the audience to watch. Camp Concert Hall allowed for a bigger stage and a bigger audience, he said.

Junior Jay Do, junior and technical team leader of Block Crew, is responsible for creating multimedia for the group, such as flyers, music and videos. His favorite tradition is the group's biannual photoshoots, which help the members build their confidence as performers, he said.

"We often joke around and say that Block Crew should count as academic credit because all our members have put in hours equivalent, if not more than, regular academic courses," Do said. "It is extremely inspiring to see the accumulation of tireless efforts that we put into this academic year to plan for the spring showcase."

Contact lifestyle writer Dylan Ramer at dylan.ramer@richmond.edu.