For 10 years, Ohio State has sidelined the Buckeye Dance Force, restricted it solely to the alumni society and faculty events, playing a distant second-fiddle to the Buckeye cheerleaders.Now OSU’s ‘other’ dance squad is showing what they can do on the other side of the world.The eight-team Chinese Men’s Basketball Alliance, China’s only full professional sports league, conducted a national search of the United States to find a dance squad to perform in five of the league’s season openers in five different cities in China. After narrowing the search to three university dance squads from the United States, the Buckeye Dance Force got the nod.”It’s going to be exciting. We’re apprehensive because it’s a long way from home but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for these girls,” said Ralph Amos, assistant vice president of marketing and constituent societies and founder and coach of the Buckeye Dance Force. On Monday, 12 of the team’s 17 girls, Amos and two OSU officials will leave for Beijing where they will begin a rigorous 16-day, five-city trip through China. The troupe will hold dance clinics with local high school dance teams, tour the city, and perform for the crowd before game time.”This allows us exposure to a unique and exciting country. And we get to expose these people to synchronized, collegiate dancing,” said Amos.The trip will take the dance squad through Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shanghai, and all expenses other than food are being paid by the Hong Kong-based company that conducted the search.Despite missing over two weeks of the quarter, courses have turned out to be a minor problem for the girls taking the trip. While some have had to drop classes to make the trip, most have been accommodated by their professors. “Some of the professors have been awesome,” said Amos. “Some of the girls have been told they can make up mid-terms when they get back and others have been told they can write a paper on the trip for credit.”Amos also hopes that the trip to China will open OSU’s eyes to other possible uses of the Buckeye Dance Force. “A possible off-shoot of this public exposure is that the university will start using us for more events. We’re an addition, not a replacement of cheerleaders. *It’s not just a bunch of boobs and butts moving around out there. It’s energy. We raise the excitement level of the entire athletic experience,”* he said.pull quote