Hipnotiq, Bradley’s hip-hop dance troupe, will be putting on its largest annual show tomorrow night at 7:30 in the arena.
“We put on an end of the year show every year, but this year is going to be especially great. It’s going to be our biggest show yet,” Hipnotiq dancer Barry Draper said. “The show will feature Hipnotiq and a few other professional groups that me and the other dancers have looked up to. They’re coming from other universities and some from Chicago. It’s really a great honor.”
Sophomore nursing major and dancer Shaylyn Hansen said the show has been in the works for a long time.
“We’ve been planning the show since the beginning of the year. A lot goes into it, so we have to start early,” she said. “The university doesn’t give us any money, so we provide our own funding. Anything we make from other events is spent on expenses.”
Hansen said the show should be a great time.
“It’s going to be a really big event,” she said. “There are a lot of amazing professional guests coming for this. It should be a really awesome show.”
Hipnotiq was formed a couple years ago, Hansen said.
“The group formed in the spring semester of 2006,” she said. “We’ve always just been a group of people who get together a few times a week for a few hours to share our love for music and dance. Right now there are only students on the team, but we’ve had local community members on the team before.”
Junior mathematics secondary education major and dancer Derrick Apigo said Hipnotiq has grown a lot since the formation of the group.
“Last weekend was our first time performing outside of the Peoria community,” he said. “We’re really growing pretty fast.”
Sophomore learning behavior specialist major and dancer Aimee Pilalias said she agreed.
“We’re really branching out and starting to expand,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of great opportunities.”
Draper, Hansen, Apigo and Pilalias all said they agreed Hipnotiq is like a large family.
“There are a lot of crazy personalities on the team,” Draper said. “We’ve evolved into a big family. We’re a bunch of crazy kids who act stupid with each other and have fun. We have a weird dynamic that most don’t understand, but it works for us. We even have team bonding at Ice Cream Shack. We do what we love to do with people that we love.”
Draper said the show tomorrow presents Hipnotiq a great opportunity to show Bradley how much they’ve grown and changed, and they’re excited for it.
“We want to show Bradley what we’ve done and how we’ve grown,” he said. “It’s cool for us as a team to have all these groups perform with us.”
Tickets are $3 before the show and $5 at the door.
