![]({"small":"https://res.cloudinary.com/digicomm/image/upload/t_square-small/news-magazine/2025/_assets/photo-2025-06-17-01-34-57.jpg","medium": "https://res.cloudinary.com/digicomm/image/upload/t_square-medium/news-magazine/2025/_assets/photo-2025-06-17-01-34-57.jpg","large":"https://res.cloudinary.com/digicomm/image/upload/t_square-small/news-magazine/2025/_assets/photo-2025-06-17-01-34-57.jpg","xlarge":"https://res.cloudinary.com/digicomm/image/upload/t_square-medium/news-magazine/2025/_assets/photo-2025-06-17-01-34-57.jpg","xxlarge":"https://res.cloudinary.com/digicomm/image/upload/t_square-medium/news-magazine/2025/_assets/photo-2025-06-17-01-34-57.jpg"})
Student dance club wins national hip-hop competition
The Panthers Dance Team is only one year old — and already basking in victory. In its debut competitive season, the team won first place in the hip-hop category at the Dance Team Union College Classic National competition earlier this year.
The team is a student club made up of 21 young women, most of whom grew up dancing in studios and participating in competitions. The club was specifically designed as a dance team that would compete on the collegiate circuit.
In its first competition, the team brought home a national title with a performance that featured classic ‘90s-style hip-hop moves to the rhythm of Ne-Yo’s “Closer.” The team earned the top spot with a score of more than 91 points.
View this post on Instagram
“I was balling my eyes out when we won,” says marketing major Angelica Manduley, the student group’s leader and the choreographer of the winning dance. “I knew we were doing great because of the first-round scores. But I didn’t want to be over-confident. You still have to fight for it. I didn’t expect us to win our first year. But we did because we worked hard and put in the effort.”
Manduley had been thinking about that choreography long before entering the competition. “I’ve had that dance and song in my head for three years,” she says. “I was waiting to actually have it performed."
"The love I have for dance," Manduley says. "It’s never about winning. It’s about making the audience feel something. All of us have that yearning to dance, to compete and to be out on the stage and come together as a team.”
Assembling a team
A student in the Honors College, Manduley has balanced her academic, leadership and extracurricular activities with incredible success. She has a 3.8 GPA, and she previously served as an executive board member of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority and a member of the Honors Leadership Council. She is a dance teacher and choreographer at local studios.
A former high school dance captain, she wanted to find a way to dance at competitions in college. The club was born.
When she reached out to friends and posted announcements advertising the club’s auditions, she was met with enthusiasm. “I wanted a team of at least 10 or 12 girls,” Manduley says. “We ended up with 21.”
Manduley’s goal was to have the team compete at the Dance Team Union College Classic National, a competition for high school and college dance teams across the country. She knew the timeline would be tight — after finalizing the team, the dancers only had about four months to practice the routines. But they made it work, putting in long practice sessions.
When they arrived at the competition, the Panthers smashed the hip-hop performance on the first round and went on to earn the top score in the finals. They also made it to the final round in the jazz dance category.
One last dance
The club is more than just a student organization for competitive dancing. It’s a lifeline to dance, says Manduley.
“In Miami, there is such a great dance community, and at FIU there are so many dancers,” she says. “It often happens that talented dancers graduate from high school and they think once they get to college dancing is over. Because of this team, we are giving an opportunity for the dancers at FIU to not let go of dancing and to compete together.”
Angelica Manduley
Naomi Santos is one of those passionate dancers. She was a senior about to graduate when she learned of the dance team. She couldn’t resist the chance to join — even though she hadn’t danced competitively in three years.
“It’s not easy to get yourself out there after you’ve stopped training,” Santos says. “But joining the team was the best decision I could have made. It was well worth it. Just the bond you build with the girls. It’s a kind of sisterhood, almost like a sorority. Everyone cares about dance and artistry the same, and we all have the same passion. It’s just great being able to share the stage with those girls.”
She adds, “I was proud of putting myself out there and coming back to competitive dancing. I was able to do the things I was doing when I was 17 and 18 years old. I had even more dedication, more passion and more ability.”
In the end, the competition marked an important milestone for Santos. “I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this one last time,” she says.
Santos graduated with her business degree in May, shortly after the team’s victory. Santos is currently a company director at Equinox Dance Company and a varsity dance coach at Miami Arts Studio. She also helps run the school’s social media channels.
Starting on the right foot
Psychology major Carolina Salas heard about the dance club when she was a freshman looking to get involved on campus.
“I wanted to keep dancing,” says Salas, who has been participating in dance competitions for years. “And I wanted to seek friendships at FIU. I definitely made new friends on the team. We’re all super close now. We were the founding team. I think that bonding made us stronger as dancers, as people, and as a team.”
She adds, “When we won, we all just took a big breath and thought, ‘Wow, it was worth it.’ Also, the competition was on my birthday. It was a great birthday.”
Salas, an Honors student who plans to pursue a career in pediatric cognitive training, works at a local psychology and learning center called What’s on Your Mind. In her role, she helps children who have ADHD, OCD, autism and learning disabilities boost their memory, processing speed and visual and auditory attention.
She says her experience in competitive dancing has helped her bring a team-style mentality to her work. “In my job, I’m not just telling the student what to do, we’re a team. I need to know more about what the child is thinking and feeling so I can try to help.”
She plans to stay on the dance team throughout the rest of her time in college.
“I’m definitely excited for the future of the club,” she says. “This is only the beginning.”
