UMass Dartmouth Dancers Get Shot With Celtics

By Max Bowen/ mbowen@cnc.com
The Mariner at Townonline.com

Vanessa Campea said she hasn’t thought much about her upcoming performance at the Nov. 8 Celtics basketball game with the UMass Dartmouth Dance Team.

But if she is nervous about it, she expects she’ll feel it soon enough.

"I’m sure it’ll hit me as soon as I’m standing there," said Campea, an Abington resident who has been with the team for the past two years.

Campea has been dancing since she was 3 years old, and when she heard of the team, she felt it could open a lot of doors as well as make a few friends.

Two students started the team in the spring of 2003 and since its inception has performed at UMass Dartmouth basketball games, both the boys and girls teams.

With the recent addition of coach Amy Carroll, Campea said the team will now be able to take part in competitions against other schools, an opportunity to prove they’ve got the right moves.

"It’s exciting because being able to compete, that’s the whole idea behind the practice," said Campea. "I do it for fun in the first place."

This all-female team has 14 members, some as local as Abington and Plymouth and some from as far away as Fairhaven or Canton, Conn. They perform different types of dance including jazz, hip hop, ballet and lyrical, which Campea described as being somewhere between ballet and jazz.

The team is selling $60 seats for the Celtics game against the Charlotte Bobcats at only $40, with the proceeds going toward their expenses.

Taking part in competitions will also give Campea and other dancers a chance to recognized by the school as an official college team, a designation that could garner them some funding for uniforms. For now the team holds fundraisers to covers its costs.

Campea is a junior at UMass with a major in civil engineering. Hip-hop is her favorite style of dance, mainly because of the fast pace. While she doesn’t plan to pursue a career as a dancer, she said being on the team helps her to organize the rest of her schedule.

"It’s fun and it’s where I met my friends," said Campea. "I’m not looking to dance for the rest of my life, as much as I’d like to."