The sound of music fills the room as several dancers take the stage. Their movements gracefully match the rhythm of the song, changing to match the emotions being conveyed. The rest of the world seems to slowly vanish as they perform. The feeling of being free through dance is like no other.

“Dancing in Angles, or more commonly known as DIA, is a club offered here at VHS,” sophomore Elizabeth Jackson said “It was started this school year as a way to come together and help the community by offering free dance classes to those who otherwise would not be able to experience the art of dance.” 

Dancing in Angles was created near the end of December with the intention of providing affordable dance classes to the youth of Austin. Their leadership team consists of trained dancers from Vandegrift who volunteered their time to help bring this opportunity to young children.

“The leadership team consists of a variety of different people all very hard working and very passionate about dance,” Jackson said. “Additionally, they all have their own unique thing that they offer to this organization and they are each able to use their skills and what they learned in order to enhance and help grow the club.”

The name was inspired by the idea that life isn’t always predictable and that it has complications and problems that arise at various times. These problems can’t be avoided so people often have to find ways around them in order to continue on their path in life.

“It is inspired from the idea that life isn’t just a straight line and rather it is a bunch of angles, and in our case we are dancing through that and we are living through that and realizing that although those angles can be sharp and bumpy we always manage to work it out and a lot of us manage to work it out through dance” Jackson said.

Though they have not had an official meeting yet, the club has been reaching out to various communities throughout the area and have hosted several PIT meetings at the school to strengthen their relationship within the leadership team.

“In the near future we hope to hold a completely free dance clinic to underprivileged kids and adolescents in the Austin area and allow them to come in, enjoy and learn the art of dance without having to do with money or having to stress about funding for this event to be able to enjoy it and the company of others,” Jackson said. 

Dance has been a big part of Jackson’s life and she hopes that other people will feel just as inspired as she does when she dances.

“Dance has been an outlet that helps through their high school life and general life,” Jackson said “I wanted to be able to give that not only to those at Vandegrift but also those outside of Vandegrift through our community in Austin who aren’t able to experience dance.”