Tevin Arrington
Janna Ingan
Reporter
Mississippi University for Women’s dance group Audacity has plans for another exciting year of performances.
In less than one year, Audacity has made quite a name for itself both on campus and outside of it. The group officially started in November of 2013, but plans for creating a dance group were discussed in the summer of that year.
“Coming to the W, it was really my first time not being able to do anything with dance. So it felt kind of off to me, and I really missed it, and I heard that the W was really open to students forming their own organizations. So me and Antonio (Small) began to talk about it early on,” said Janna Ingan, president of Audacity.
Ingan and vice president of Audacity, Antonio Small, met and became friends while attending Mississippi Delta Community College. The two have been performing in the arts for a majority of their lives. Ingan is originally from the Philippines and comes from a musical and dance background.
According to her, there was an emphasis on dance from a young age both within her family and in school. Small started dancing in junior high school with a boys show choir. He discovered that he was a quick learner and soon advanced to the elite show choir team at his school.
Before the two formed the dance team, they performed at a talent show hosted in Kincannon that garnered a lot of attention and interest. The response motivated them to go through the process of creating a group.
Ingan first talked to Kimone Holtzmon, coordinator of student engagement, about their idea of forming a dance team. Tim Hopkins, advisor of Phi Beta Sigma and Elite Model Squad, volunteered to help them with the process of making the group official.
The following semester, Audacity put together its first big performance. During Chicken Tuesday in the cafeteria of MUW, the group had a flash mob. That performance was Mariam Guede’s most memorable performance with the team. Guede was one of the original members of the team. She found out about the group through an email and decided to try out.
“I wanted to be in Audacity because I’ve danced my whole life. I started dancing hip-hop and breakdancing at age 12, so I said ‘why not,’” said Guede.
Much like the founder of Audacity, this is Guede’s last year at the W, and the future of the group in the coming years is unknown. But the three are focused on the present. They revealed that the group has a special treat in store for MUW. Not much can be revealed at the moment, but they are confident that students will be amazed.