By Miranda Holloway
Executive Online Editor
Girls from kindergarten up to eighth grade fill Prospect’s field house on Dec. 3 for Orchesis’s second annual dance clinic. Proceeds from the event go towards the group’s trip to the Orange Bowl this Jan. and   to pay for the choreographers that they use throughout the year.
The girls were split up according to age and learned dances in hip-hop and jazz, among other styles. The girls stayed with the other kids in their age group while Orchesis members came around and taught them their dances. They worked from 9 a.m. to 2:50 p.m. learning and rehearsing their dances and put on a showcase for relatives at 3.
Brooke Wilson, a seventh grader at Lincoln Middle School in Mount Prospect who attended the group’s first clinic last year, enjoyed her hip- hop dance and that the dances were harder this year. She also said that they split the girls up differently this year, with the seventh and eighth  graders being in separate groups.
“I really enjoyed how we broke up into smaller groups. There was more attention on each of us so we all got to learn [the dances] better,” Wilson said.
This was Orchesis senior Kasia Nawrocki’s first time at the dance clinic but she did notice the benefits of being in these smaller groups.
“They can get personal questions answered and maybe they would be embarrassed to ask it in front of a larger group,” Nawrocki said.
Nawrocki thinks that the girls all enjoyed themselves and was happy to see them learn so much and enjoy their performance.
“I liked seeing them having fun and enjoying dance and not doing it because they were forced to come here,” Nawrocki said. “They actually like coming here and dancing and performing in front of everyone. It’s nice to see them love dance just like I do.”
Nawrocki also said that she could “just tell” that the girls looked up to her and the other Orchesis members.
Wilson, who dances with the Mount Prospect Park District, and hopes to one day be a member of Orchesis, was impressed by what she saw from her teachers.
“They really know what they are doing,” Wilson said.