Originally known as Dancing for a Cause, Invision was founded in 2019 by former Allen students Tessa Bui, Joseph Onyendi and Matthew Mai. The crew has gained popularity in recent years and even won the People’s Choice Award at the 2022 AHS Talent Show. As the club’s prominence within AHS continues to grow, an inside look on the inner workings of their practice and the community that they have built around dance is of interest.

“We have two distinct groups that usually split up so one group does choreo and one group does bboying or breakdancing,” bboy manager Albert Yu said. “If we’re not doing talent show choreo or something like that, we’ll be teaching our own moves and choreos that we created ourselves.”

Yu, who is currently a senior, described bboying as breakdances or someone who is involved with hip-hop culture. He further explained that a typical practice when the crew has a performance is them running through their group’s respective routine. These practices include extensive refinement of the choreography in order to maintain synchronization during performances. 

“We do a lot of what we call cleaning, and that’s basically where we repetitively go over every move or combo in a choreography and make sure everyone is in sync and that all comes from timing,” vice president Kaelan Nguyen said. “We make sure that they’re all hitting each beat like they need to be and if they aren’t then we just keep going over until they are.”

All of their hard work during practice, for the talent show specifically, paid off. After three weeks of what Invision calls “hellweek,” the crew won an award at the talent show, something that has never occurred before. 

“To be completely honest, I don’t think that we thought that the performance was 100 percent our best potential, so having that award even when we don’t feel 100 percent was very fulfilling,” choreo manager Sangeet Banubakode said.

The club, however, has not been without a few challenges. Before becoming as fulfleged as it is now, the original formation of the club failed. 

“This club was known as DFC, Dancing for a Cause,” president Michael Chau said. “They had other studio management in Plano, but then they shut down so each club that had the DFC name transformed into their own thing and Invision was what we came up with after one failed attempt. The club itself started to fall apart our second semester of freshman year. We all kind of had to force ourselves to kind of get together and understand what to do. But we didn’t fully mature until sophomore year.”

Chau is currently a senior and has been with Invision for the majority of its existence. He and the other officers have seen significant growth within the club. Not only in size, but the skill and capability of leaders, too. 

“I had no idea what it was like on the officers to try to direct so many people at once but since the year started I feel like I’ve gotten better and better at connecting with the members and helping them learn what I want them to,” Nguyen said.

Their improvement in their leadership is easily recognized by their members, many of whom have learned how to dance from their officers.

“They’re open to beginners like myself and everyone there is really great and they helped each other, especially the officers,” member Kacie Nguyen said. “They’re really great leaders and role models to us.”

Not only is everyone welcome at Invision, members such as junior Grace Ferrer, have described gaining a reason to look forward to coming to school, especially on Mondays.

“I come back from school really tired but as soon as I walk in our energies just bounce off of each other,” Ferrer said. “People know me in Invision as someone who does not look super tired because I am always bouncing off the walls and I think I can only attribute that to [the] members.”

The leadership and passion that members get from Invision has created a close knit community that many say they find comforting.

“We spend so much time together that we consider ourselves like family,” social relations manager Tessa Scott said. “This is like our second family.”