Alyssa Gordon (12), student choreographer, instructs and teaches a contemporary jazz routine called “Just Living,” for a spring dance competition in March.

Gordon explained that YPAS puts on a dance competition called the High School Dance Festival. “You compete with students from other schools, and your school, to see who gets into the festival. [You] record a choreographed dance, send in the tape, then the panel decides who gets invited into the festival,” Gordon said.

Every Tuesday, about twenty YPAS dance majors and other magnet majors gather in the basement of the YPAS Annex from 2:30 to 3:30 to learn Gordon’s dance routine.

“This dance is supposed to look real, like pedestrian, like something you would see on the street,” Ericka Shuler (10) said.

“I want to show off you all’s best stuff at dancing. You know what I mean?” Gordon said as she showed the dancers their parts.

“I think Alyssa is a very talented dancer and choreographer. When she dances, she has a very unique quality that would be hard to find in other dancers. The dance she is making is really going to be a great one,” Charles Buckner (12) said.