All eyes were on the University of Cincinnati dance team during its electric hip-hop routine at the 2026 Universal Dance Association College Dance Team National Championship in January.
The Bearcats pulled out all the stops, from difficult dance moves to a music mashup and, most importantly, their jaw-dropping light-up shirts, which partially led to their virality and a third-place finish.
“The formations!! The tricks, the DANCE moves, the difficulty, the shirts changing colors, the music/mix, 10/10. A first place routine if you ask me,” a TikTok user commented. Multiple videos of the squad had over 1 million views.
The Bearcats first learned their hip-hop routine, which GRV, a Los Angeles-based dance crew, helped choreograph, in October 2025. But the light-up shirts became a work in progress shortly before the team left for nationals, head coach Courtney Dang, who was part of the UC dance team herself from 2013 to 2017, said.
The origin story of the viral light-up shirts
Making the light-up shirts was anything but easy. It took a lot of craft nights, engineering and some love from parents.
Originally, the shirts were supposed to have a hockey puck-shaped light, with Dang describing the initial look as “Iron Man-esque.” But the team and coaches decided it would look cool if the lights were built into the design of the C-paw logo on their shirts.
“(It) took a lot of Amazon-ing and product testing, but we were able to find (a light) that was bright enough for the stage,” Dang said.
The team then got to work, tracing the white lining of the shirts’ logos with the LED lights.
“We started (working on the shirts) the Friday before we left, and I want to say it took like 10 hours to make all of them the first time,” senior and team captain Paige Taylor said, adding there were lots of errors the first time around.
“Each shirt had to be redone, but thank God we had some awesome and really intelligent parents that when we came down to Florida, they kind of took over and did all of the smart people engineering and stuff and fixed them the right way.”
Some of the girls were even working on tweaking the shirts right up until their performance. Taylor shared a TikTok showing the making of the shirts that garnered over 122,000 likes and more than 644,000 views.
How did the shirts work?
It took a lot of ingenuity to pull everything off.
Dang said an extension cord ran along each dancer’s arm, connecting to a battery pack that also had a switch to turn it on and be able to use it as a power source for the light.
“So, part of it went into their sports bra, and we had to tape the button on, and tape around that, so whenever they were dancing, the battery pack wouldn’t fall out, move or disconnect,” she said.
They also put heat shrink wrap around the USB end to ensure the pack didn’t come loose. If it did, the lights would have flickered and other issues could have arisen that would have cost the Bearcats points.
“The girls who weren’t in routine would be doing maintenance on it or swapping out shirts or fixing the shirts as we were about to go on as well,” Dang said.
“At least twice every minute, I would look down and press the button just to make sure (it was working). Even when we were in our prayer circle,” senior Brooke Atwood said.
‘It was almost as if we had just won’
When you perform with props, especially at nationals, it can be nerve-wracking. A lot has to go right and hardly anything can go wrong.
“It’s always a high risk, but it’s always high reward when we do execute it perfectly or close to perfect,” Dang said.
So, when the Bearcats finished their semifinals routine, it was “instant tears.”
“I remember going into semis (and thinking), ‘These people have no idea what’s about to happen,’ and this is like, so undoubtably cool. And then I just prayed to God and hoped that it actually worked, and it worked both times,” Taylor said.
Atwood began crying before the team even stepped on the mat for its semifinals performance. As the senior looked to the stands, she could see pockets of the crowd and people in the nosebleed seats turning on their phone flashlights, supporting them.
“We were like, ‘Wait, that’s not our family. Those are people that are just supporting us,’ and that was really cool,” she said.
After nailing the performance, Atwood said it almost felt like they won.
“We didn’t even know if we had made it to finals yet,” Atwood said.
The Bearcats’ dance team ranked second in the Division 1A Hip-Hop Semifinals, clinching a spot in the finals. They ranked behind No. 1 LSU, which went viral in 2022 for its hip-hop performance to Ciara’s “Like a Boy.”
During their finals performance, Taylor said she felt like even more people pulled out their phones to join in on the light show.
“It was the entire arena,” she said.
Cincinnati’s electrifying routine helped it claim a third-place finish behind LSU. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, claimed the first-place title. The last time the Bearcats medaled in Hip-Hop at nationals was in 2020, according to Dang. Before that, the team last won the Hip-Hop title in 2017, when Dang was on the team.
Last year, the team placed fifth in the Hip-Hop category.
The team also placed fourth in Game Day, a performance that embraces each school’s fight songs and other aspects of school spirit, and fourth in the Pom category. Pom is an energetic dance style in which the dancers typically hold pom poms.
The community embraced the dance team
Everyone is used to seeing the dance team shaking pom-poms on the sidelines at basketball and football games, but for them to come home with national hardware was something the school and community took pride in.
“It was really cool, honestly. I came back to class and the students kind of recognized us. Like people in my classes were like, ‘Wait, you’re that girl,'” Taylor said. “We’ve always posted on TikTok, but it has never caught on like it did this year.”
Once it got back from Florida, the team performed at a pre-game show where people showed love and support for the award-winning performance.
“It was really cool to see everybody pay attention to us. We’ve always been there, but I think there was an extra layer and an extra amount of people that finally recognized us for who we are and it was really cool to see that,” Taylor added.
For Atwood, who is currently student teaching, returning to the classroom made her feel like a celebrity.
“My kids, they all have phones now. They think I’m like Taylor Swift for this,” she said.
What’s next for the UC dance team?
The UC dance team will represent the U.S. in Hip-Hop at the 2026 International Cheer Union World Championships in Orlando on April 20.
It’s the first time the team will return to the world stage in 10 years.
A board/committee at USA Cheer meets and selects the teams representing each category. Dang sent in a video explaining why the Bearcats should have been selected. The submission also included the Bearcats’ nationals performance and showed additional skills that weren’t in the routine.
UC has a storied legacy at worlds, earning gold medals in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. The team’s victory in 2009 also marked the first time a college team was selected to represent the USA, according to a press release.
In preparation for worlds, the dance team is accepting donations to “directly support travel, lodging, meals, competition fees, uniforms, training needs and essential expenses,” Dang said, as anyone looking to donate can visit impact.uc.edu.
“Worlds is like the Olympics of cheer and dance. You get to meet athletes from all over the country that were selected to represent USA cheer and dance, and of course, you get to meet athletes from other countries and exchange trinkets, T-shirts and other memorabilia,” Dang said in a statement.
“Truly a one-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m so excited for the team to be able to experience this and to be able to have this memory together.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: UC’s dance team went TikTok viral. Now, it’s going to worlds
Reporting by Kaycee Sloan, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
