Combined with performances every Friday and Saturday night during the basketball season, the wear and tear on the dancers can be quite severe. Cameron jokes that she and fellow freshmen Thea Daniels and Kim Gould spend most of their time talking about how sore they are after practice.

Still, the team perseveres. There are issues about practice space—the CDT occasionally has to change venues between the QRAC, the MAC mezzanine room, and Rieman Hall in Radcliffe Quad to accommodate other dance groups—but this constant displacement rarely affects their generally genial disposition.

“Because our team is so small, we have a great group dynamic,” Chandler said. “And that’s really what keeps us going week in and week out.”

Cohesiveness is certainly important for a squad that is competitive on the national stage, but perhaps the most amazing part of this year’s team is the influx of new talent and energy. Half the team is new this year, and their backgrounds and talents lend fresh legs to an already strong program.

Finding New Talent

Daniels and Gould first met when they both visited Harvard in the summer before their senior year of high school. On separate whirlwind tours of East Coast colleges, neither one was really dead set on applying.

For Daniels, a blond-haired, bright-eyed Oklahoman, the prospect of going to Harvard was always more of a casual whim than a concrete goal. Though she enjoyed her visit, Daniels didn’t have her heart set on Harvard and in fact believed she would end up somewhere like Georgetown or UCLA.

For Gould, a sun-loving Californian with strong Stanford roots running at least three generations deep, her first experience of life along the Charles left her somewhat underwhelmed. It seemed that Palo Alto was becoming more and more of a reality.

Coincidentally, the two girls would meet repeatedly over the next week on tours at different colleges and strike up a friendship. It was far from a coincidence, however, that they ended up at Harvard.

For if it’s one thing that Daniels and Gould share in common, it’s a love of dance.

And as they soon found out, Harvard is home to one of the nation’s premier dance teams.

As Gould puts it, her two most important criteria in looking at colleges were “volleyball and dancing.” Harvard afforded her the opportunity to play Division I volleyball, while the CDT gave her a chance to continue dancing, an activity she has enjoyed since she was four years old.

Daniels, who also started dancing at four, likewise brings a long-standing dance ethic to the team. A four-year All-American cheerleader at Heritage Hall High School, Daniels excelled with a local dance group, Kim Massay Dance Productions, and eventually became a Level 10 gymnast (which is one level below Olympic athletes) before injuries forced her out of the sport.

But Daniels and Gould aren’t the only new members who have made an immediate impact. Cameron, who like Gould is from California and like Daniels was once an All-American cheerleader, rounds out arguably the strongest freshman class in the history of the team.

“The new girls definitely have impressive dance credentials and there is definitely a big difference on the team,” says Joyce Demonteverde ’03, who will serve as co-captain of next year’s squad. “They add to the energy and the execution of our performances and practices.”