Ballroom team to debut dance pieces tonight
By Derek Gurr
The BYU ballroom dance company will debut here two of the championship pieces it will perform in the upcoming Blackpool Dance Festival in England.
The company will perform 19 different numbers tonight at 7 in the de Jong Concert Hall in anticipation of the highly celebrated festival tour which begins May 28 and ends June 16. The company is excited for the opportunity to show off the culmination of months of practice.
“I’ve been looking forward to Blackpool for years,” said Jared Hancock, a graduate student studying chemistry, who dances in the group.
According to the festival website, Blackpool is one of the oldest and most prominent dance festivals in the world, dating to 1920. Teams come from all over the globe to compete in the famed Empress ballroom.
BYU has a good reputation at the event. The dance championship has been consistently successful for 30 years.
“We have the longest running national championship,” Hancock said. “The world knows who we are.”
The company is divided between two styles of dancing — standard dancers and Latin dancers. Three championship couples specializing in these dances have assisted in choreography.
“The Latin medley was choreographed by the current world Latin American champions,” said Linda Wakefield, one of the company directors. “We also have another couple help us who are second in the U.S. for Latin American dancing. The couple that has been helping us with the standard choreography are five-time world 10-Dance champions.” The dance couples who helped choreograph for the Latin team include Michael Malatowski and Johanna Leunis and Eugene Katsevman and Maria Manusova. Choreographing for the standard team are Alain Doucet and Anik Jolicoeur.
The group has practiced long and hard in preparation for the competition, coached by co-director Lee Wakefield.
“The standard that Lee sets for us is very high,” said Brent Friess, a dancer from Salem, Ore. “Basically, he shoots for perfection.”
The company works long hours to learn the dances they perform. During the school year, the team practices at least two hours daily and has another technique class to help them master each piece. Outside of class time, they are sometimes required to practice five hours to prepare for routines.
Apart from the actual dance floor exercises, there is yet another element of preparation. The ballroom company does one thing that has very little to do with footing, twirls and gestures: “rhinestoning.”
“You sit around a table and put tiny stones on the costume dresses,” Hancock said. “We put thousands and thousands on all of the dresses.”
Each glittery stone needs to be hand-glued to the costumes. Every dancer logs 20 hours into preparing the costumes for performance.
Thirty-two students will go to England, along with several advisers and technicians. The company competes at Blackpool once every three years, in addition to the national championships each September.
This article was published on May 14, 2010 by the Daily Universe, BYU’s student newspaper sponsored by the BYU Department of Communications.
