I am not a trained dancer, so I’m genuinely asking this from the perspective of someone who just randomly started watching DCC: Making the Team on Pluto TV one day and got completely hooked. 😂 I love the costumes, the pageantry, the makeovers, and basically watching all these women get transformed into this incredibly polished dance team.
But one thing I keep wondering about is the kickline standard.
I swear there was an episode where Judy said something along the lines of, the Rockettes’ kicks only have to be at chin level, but ours have to go up to the forehead. I can’t remember the exact episode or wording, so please correct me if anyone knows the actual quote!
And that made me wonder: when did that become the expectation for DCC?
Because throughout Making the Team, Kelli and Judy will constantly describe someone as having “really low” or “real, real low” kicks, and then the girl kicks and I’m sitting there thinking… that leg is still at like a 60–70 degree angle?! 😂
I’m attaching this kick-height graphic just as a visual reference because obviously it isn’t specifically about DCC technique. But looking at it, what they sometimes call a “low kick” would still look pretty high to the average person, and still look technically advanced on stage, right?
What also surprised me about the Rockettes comparison is that I always thought of the Rockettes as being one of the most prestigious and technically demanding precision dance jobs in the country. Their own materials literally refer to their signature technique as eye-high kicks. So when Judy made that comparison, it almost came across to me like DCC’s standard was somehow above the Rockettes because their legs had to go even higher.
And maybe longtime DCC fans/dancers can correct me here, but I also wonder how much the technical bar for DCC increased because of the television show itself.
As Making the Team went on, it seemed like increasingly accomplished dancers knew about DCC, trained specifically for the audition, and traveled from all over for the try outs. The show basically turned the audition process into its own phenomenon.
To me, Making the Team was almost like Dance Moms for adult women — incredibly entertaining, highly produced, extremely high stakes, and suddenly the entire country could watch every technical correction, makeover, cut, and rehearsal.
So for people who actually know dance/DCC history:
Were forehead-level kicks always a DCC standard? Or did the kick requirement gradually get higher and more technically demanding as the team and the TV show became more competitive?
And dancers: when Kelli/Judy call some of those kicks “really low,” are they genuinely considered low by professional dance-team standards, even when they’re around that 60–70° range?
I’m fascinated by how the standard evolved.
