The Garfield Dance Team, winners of last year’s Bubblin’ Brown, is ready to start pop, lock, and droppin’ it with a new talented team this year.

Thirty-eight girls and two boys gathered at the lower gym under the library for their first day of dance tryouts after school three weeks ago. Four days and nine hours of dancing later, the new Garfield Dance Team was chosen, consisting of only 15 dancers.

“A lot of the girls were inexperienced or had no rhythm and others were really good and picked it up right away,” said Sigrid Williams, who tried out but wasn’t sure if she made the team.

“I was kind of intimidated at first,” said Hannah Moriguchi, who went to the tryouts with several friends. “They kept saying if you think you can dance, we’ll tell you the truth and if you can’t, we’ll tell you so.” After a while, she began to have fun even though she admitted that she probably didn’t make the team.

Many potential dancers had to quit their other activities to join with no guarantee of getting on the squad. “There was a lot of disappointment,” said incoming captain Keisha Credit.

The team will be performing at the homecoming assembly, and after about a month they will start making up moves and perfecting their dance for the Bubblin’ Brown dance competition. Bubblin’ Brown is organized by Garfield ASB, takes place in May, and features intense competition from schools all over the city.

“I think that we picked strong dancers but we need a lot of work,” said veteran dancer Cheryl Delostrinos, who added that the dance team will be more diverse this year: four white girls, two Asian girls, and nine black girls are on the final list, which was posted two weeks ago. Last year’s final team had one white girl, one Asian girl, and thirteen black girls.