With sharp, synchronized movements, funky beats of music and glistening smiles, the MSU Dance Team has a unique style, giving its audiences an entertaining performance.

"The MSU style is an energetic, hip-hop, jazzy style," co-captain and marketing senior Stephanie Dovletian said. "We are there to entertain."

Performing at all the home football games, some women's and all men's home basketball games, members of the MSU Dance Team are constantly around campus doing what they love.

"We are a big part of getting students involved," co-captain and interior design senior Brittney Detkowski said. "It makes the games so much more exciting when others are excited too."

The competitive MSU Dance Team consists of 16 girls, ranging from sophomores to seniors. Up until last year, the 19-year-old dance team was called "Motion" and was sponsored as a club by ASMSU, MSU's undergraduate student government.

Now sponsored by the university, the team is self-run, with a person in charge of each area and without the help of a coach.

"Our dance team is unique - there has not been a coach for over 10 years," Dovletian said.

The practices are run by the captains, who have to take attendance, facilitate and discipline throughout practice. Even though everyone is friends, words of discipline such as "be quiet" and "stop talking" can be heard while they try to learn the new routines.

A choreography committee creates the routines and brings them to practice for the rest of the team to give input. It is a group effort and everyone has a say in the dancing.

"We feed off each other," Detkowski said.

Many teams around the country hire choreographers to make up the routines, but this does not interest the MSU Dance Team.

"We don't want an outsider to come in - they don't know us," Dovletian said. "Each and every one of us put something into the dance."

Detkowski said it is difficult balancing nine hour of practice a week, school and a job.

"You really have to love it, you are here with the same 16 girls every day," Dovletian said. "You have to love dance, love each other. In the end it is definitely worth being at Nationals."

This year, all their hard work paid off. In the toughest competition they say they have ever encountered, the MSU team placed 8th at the Universal Dance Association Nationals, held in Orlando from Jan. 15-19. While in previous years, they have placed 3rd and 4th, the team is just as happy with their current standing.

Both captains say the type of dance the teams are performing is getting a lot more difficult and technical.

"It is really hard to make it to finals," Detkowski said. "Top 10 in the nation is awesome."

Along with spending winter break practicing, the team had to raise all the money to compete in and travel to nationals. They raised the funds by participating in a variety of different fundraising events year-round, such as the Tom Izzo Spartan Golf Classic or selling posters.

The team also enjoys sharing its love for dancing by teaching clinics for girls ranging from kindergarten-age to freshmen in college. At the clinics, they teach routines or sideline cheers for the girls to have fun with or to take back their schools. The clinic for college students is targeted to freshmen who are possibly interested trying out for the dance team.

"The clinics are a way of recruiting," Dovletian said. "It gives girls a change to learn what we're about.

"For me, dancing is about performing. I love performing in front of 72,000 people at a football game or a bunch of screaming Izzone fans."

For information about MSU Dance Team, check out msu.edu/user/msudance.