Written by Pia Lazaro
Illustration by Miko Santos
Published 17 February 2021
As part of its talents and sports development initiative, BOx launched a three-day dance workshop called DanceBOx, an event which caters to the growth of the organization’s dancers, last February 1, 3, and 5, 2021. BOx members were given the choice among beginner, intermediate, and advanced dance classes depending on their skill level.
With a total of ten participants in each session, the program, hosted by Project Head Xavier Fabia on the Zoom online platform, started off with the introduction of the guest coaches in the main room, followed by the distribution of the attendees to their respective break-out rooms. After the two-hour dance class proper with a 20-minute break in between, all participants were brought back to the main room for the awarding of e-certificates and gift cards, and group picture taking.
Shaping biologists with dancing talent
In his statement, VP for the Department of Training and Development, Larry Acuna, announced the purpose and relevance of this event.
“DanceBOx was a project conceptualized as a means for BOx members to develop their dancing skills, in the pursuit of possibly being enticed to join the dancing team of BOx, BeatBOx. This was originally the case, since it was supposed to be scheduled during the early months before the formal recruitment for the talent teams. With this, the workshop was reframed to mainly target BeatBOx members in honing their skills, and the invitation was extended to include all members of BOx, to entice members to possibly try out new things.”
BeatBOx president Glu Lanuza added to this by saying,
“DanceBOx is relevant because it provides the members with an opportunity to explore a hobby or interest that is not typically associated with what BOx is. It allows them to express themselves more freely and to discover more about themselves.”
BOx reached out to several guest coaches, each with their own expertise on various dance styles including urban, femme, and hip-hop, for members to acquire and develop new learnings, skills, and friendships within the community. The roster of coaches is comprised of members from the Company of Ateneo Dancers, namely Aaron Limpangan, Charleen Co, Frankie Junio, and Matthew Lee, as well as Acomm alumni Ana San Pascual and BeatBOx president Glu Lanuza.
“Although our circumstances led to a mere online workshop, I opened myself to the learning experience. I’m glad I took the classes because it was a great opportunity to learn more about various dance styles while bonding with fellow orgmates who share the same interest in dance as me,” expressed Annika Cachuela, an attendee from 1 BS Biology.
Ateneo BOx 