GROSSMONT COLLEGE–The world famous BYU Folk Dance Ensemble and the Mountain Strings Orchestra treated Grossmont College to a performance in the main quad on March 12.

The BYU Dance team, which normally has around 200 members, sent their best and brightest to entertain and show of their skills to the students of Grossmont. The dance team performed a variety of dances ranging from the thunderous stomps of the Irish Jig to the exotic and energetic Bollywood.

Danielle Murray, a senior at BYU, stated that her favorite dance “is the Gypsy Dance from Romania.”  Each dancer brought something wonderful to the table and each successive dance number showed off the group’s talents.

The BYU Dance team has had a long history of excellence in their field.  According to the BYU ensemble website the group has been performing since 1964.

Jonathon Wood, Artist Manager for the BYU International Folk Dance Ensemble, stated “This group is over 50 years old, they’ve been performing around the world, they started representing the American culture at international folk dance festivals and they’ve quickly become one of the top requested American groups around the world.”

Although it may be entertaining for people to watch, The BYU dance team is not just all play and no work. The ensemble undergoes a grueling amount of practice to make sure that they put out a top quality performance.

Director Jeanette Geslison stated , “Our dancers start in the middle of August. We bring them back to the University for rehearsals and we work 9 hours a week in class and it takes us up until about a month ago to really get to a point where we have a 2 hour show put together.”

“It’s wonderful to come down here to the exotic San Diego and we love meeting different people wherever we travel to and we hope we can travel to this area again.” stated Geslison