Despite an 18 percent acceptance rate to the group, BreakFree Dance Crew seeks to uphold its core value of inclusivity by hosting open-style dance workshops that all Cornell students can attend.
“Community is very, very foundational to how BreakFree integrates ourselves into the greater Cornell community,” co-president Lillian Li ’26 said. “At its core, dance is not isolated to any one group of people.”
BreakFree consists of approximately 50 members who host workshops and attend university-level and national competitions. In November, they won first place in the Illusion Dance Competition held at Stony Brook University. A month later, they competed in the Prelude East Coast Dance Competition in Jersey City, New Jersey, with professional dance groups like The Wannabes and Outburst Dance Company among their opponents.
To curate the team, BreakFree holds auditions every semester. According to the executive board, in Spring 2025, 33 students auditioned and only six were accepted.
The audition process consists of teaching auditionees a dance choreography on the spot, recording their performance and evaluating the recording.
Additionally, there is a freestyle dance segment where auditionees showcase their personal style, as well as a round of callbacks for auditionees who make it past the first round.
However, despite the 18 percent acceptance rate this semester, co-president Saniya Halani ’25 said that they strive to prevent auditions from feeling unwelcoming.
While auditions must have a “level of objectivity” within them, the auditioning process is not wholly “impersonal,” Halani said. The team’s existing members try to be present and get to know the auditionees, even if that personal factor is not directly incorporated into audition results.
“We have a democratic system in place where … we do evaluate based on auditioning skill and their abilities,” Halani described, “But we do have that community that brings people out of their shell, either during auditions or later in the process.”
BreakFree looks for people with a “unique” dance style that “has the potential to help [the dancers] grow on the team,” Lillian Li said. “You 100 percent do not need any sort of dance experience to come in. We have many members whose very first dance class was the first pre-audition [for BreakFree].”
Graduate student Casey Li wrote that she was “super nervous” and “struggled” for her callback audition. However, she “tried to show all [she has]” and “show [her] passion.” She was accepted into the group in the fall of 2024.
Lillian Li said that “[BreakFree was] founded for the purpose of making dance accessible to absolutely everyone on Cornell’s campus” — despite the exclusivity that auditions pose. One way that the team tries to uphold this is by hosting open workshops.
Any student can attend BreakFree’s workshops, which are held multiple times throughout the semester. Team members or professional guest choreographers are invited to teach choreography to attendees.
Lillian Li views workshops as the heart of the BreakFree community and notes that they remember the “familiar faces” who come to multiple workshops.
Similarly, Casey Li agreed that the workshops help “build connections with other friends who are not on [BreakFree].”
Auditions are now over and BreakFree is busy preparing for its April 18 showcase, according to the co-presidents. In the meantime, BreakFree continues to connect with the greater student body by teaching them dances.
“That’s where the true value of our community comes from,” Lillian Li said, “by fostering a family through the workshops.”
