By the time school starts, most WA students become swamped with homework, tests, and quizzes. For the next ten months, students don’t really have the opportunity to travel internationally. However, senior Tiffany Lu recently traveled to Italy for a worldwide dance competition.

After qualifying in the United States, Lu made her way to Italy and ended up dancing her way to the top, finishing in first place.

To qualify, she had to submit a dancing video, which was later reviewed by judges in New York City. Eventually, in mid-September, Lu traveled to Italy along with competitors from several other countries, like Poland, Slovania, and Italy.

According to Lu, the competition consisted of a few rounds. Each dancer would perform and was given a score by judges. Those with the highest scores would move on to the next round, and so on. By the end of the competition, Lu had finished in 1st place.

Overall, this trip to Italy was very important to Lu.

“I think it was really meaningful because I got to go to another country, and see people there. They definitely had a different kind of dancing style, its a great learning experience,” said Lu.

One thing that Lu appreciated was how the others dancers supported her even though they were competing against her.

“Everybody there was so supportive even though they didn’t know who I was, [and] some of them didn’t speak English. It was just really nice to know that you can dance anywhere in the world and people will enjoy watching it,” said Lu.

Since she won this competition, Lu will go on to compete in the World Show Dance Championship, which is the highest level of world championships. Additionally, this competition will be more publicized than the Italy competition.

Lu added that her favorite part of dancing in Italy was how nice the other contestants were, especially since they were from different countries.

“A lot of people came up to me afterwards and they were congratulating me, and some of them were saying it in Italian, or they were trying to say it in English. […] you could tell that they were really just so kind,” said Lu.

Lu has plans to continue dancing in the future.

“I might minor in dance, but I’m definitely going to dance in college. Whether it be on a club or a company, or something like that, but I’m not sure about doing it professionally. Just because I have a lot of other interests I would love to be able to pursuer,” said Lu.