I have a large group junior class I am taking to competitions dancing to "I want it all" from High School Musical. It is a jazz dance but with a lot of character to it, ya know to match the song. Should I enter it as musical theater? They don't sing at all in it but it's a different style than say a traditional jazz dance...

If they're not lip singing at all, I wouldn't do it in Musical Theater. I only enter dances in musical theater if they're playing specific characters (like Cat in the Hat) or lip singing. They don't have to lip sing the whole thing, but at least 2-3 parts. Is there tumbling? If you don't feel it should go in jazz, try to put some tumbling in it and put it in open. Most contest make you put dances in open if there's certain types of tumbling

I have a similar issue, I have one where the girls are dolls and to be honest there's quite a bit of hip hop moves in it along with Jazz, and one where they're all characters from Alice in Wonderland there's not really any thing other than jazz but it's really character based and not what you normally see in the Jazz section.
I was thinking of putting both of them in the open section. What do you think ?

Last year at one place we went to there where several numbers in the open section that I watched and wondered why they weren't in the jazz section.

I would try them in Open if you feel they are different than Jazz.

Sometimes you see Jazz numbers in Open because certain competitions will not allow some props, lifts, or tumbling (like said before) into the Jazz category.

You have kids lip sync while they dance? Really? How does that make it musical theatre?

If they are playing different characters and acting out the song/story through dance, I would call it musical theatre. If they are just doing jazz I would put it in Jazz or Open. We put kids in the open category before when they did more classic jazz than contemporary because the jazz categories where we went were more contemporary and the open categories had some different things in them.

If they are just dancing to it, put it in jazz. If they are playing characters, musical theater, but honestly, contact the competition. They are the best ones to tell you because each one has different ideas.

I think that as long as the kids have a ton of personality and tell the story of the song through the choreography you can enter it in musical theater. I enter students in musical theater a lot for solos based on if they have a theatrical type of performance. I had a student this year do a solo dressed as a 4 year old...complete with picking a wedgie, falling asleep on stage, and crying at the end after showing off a terrible cartwheel into a split complete with jazz hand...it came out really cute and the judges love how entertaining it is. She does it to a musical theater song but not as the original character from the show. Its our own story. All year long the judges made comments thanking her for doing true theater. Her score was through the roof and not once did a judge complain that it was in a wrong category or ask her to lip sync. Instead they were looking for a theatrical interpretation and high entertainment level. And of course good dancing!

avandi83 - I was just shocked that you think it needs lip syncing to be musical theatre.

"I only enter dances in musical theater if they're playing specific characters (like Cat in the Hat) or lip singing. They don't have to lip sing the whole thing, but at least 2-3 parts."

Musical Theatre is about acting a character and telling a story. Not lip syncing.

OH, that's what I was saying. If they lip sing OR play a charcter/tell a story, I put it in musical theater. Not both. It's just usually I have lip singing in all my musical theater, I guess it's hard for me to have them play a charcter or tell a story without it. I thought you were saying that lip singing isn't musical theater enough, like they should really be singing or something.