Find the rhythm. -Eric Skinner, SSWSC Freestyle
Move with a purpose. -Kelly Meek, SSHS Basketball
Find our shape, find our rhythm, boom, boom, boom. -Rob Bohlmann, SSHS Soccer, SFC
Last night, in a full-to-capacity Grand ballroom, the lights dimmed for the first performance of Steamboat's Dancing with the Stars. A young man who was raised as a skier, soccer player, and basketballer took the stage, introduced by the emcee as "the preeminent male dancer in Steamboat Springs." He carried a djembe drum acquired on a trip to Ghana, and struck up a rhythm, inciting the crowd to join. He may have looked like a musician, but the rhythm he was leading was learned not in a music studio, but on the mogul courses of the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. His body absorbing the moguls one by one, sending booms into the air, leading the audience to clap and cheer.
His partner joined him on stage, brown skin and a sleek red dress, and the dance quickly became a Salsa, full of spins and chopping footwork. The dancer, in his mind, was back on a basketball court, doing defensive drills for Coach Kelly Meek. "Point your toe," Meek demanded. "Slide, slide, slide. Crossover footwork, spin, slide. Point your toe." The red dress fluttered and flew across the stage.
The song, from Paul Simon's album Graceland, blended an African choral arrangement with Simon's distinctive Americanisms. On the stage, West African agbaja movement blended with a Latin flavor, el movimiento latino. In his mind, the dancer was coursing across a perfectly mowed Dudley field, forming angles with his teammates, overlapping, giving and going, creating and recreating options for passes. The ball seemed to float, hover, dance. As the song came to a crescendo and the dancers finished with a flourished dip, the crowd exploded in a standing ovation. In the cheers he could hear Coach Bohlmann say, "Well done Gentlemen."
The relationship between sport and dance is sometimes acknowledged, but under appreciated. Last night, there was a complete convergence of the two. Sport became dance, and movement was celebrated for movement's sake. Coaches Adams, Drake, Moos, DeWolfe, and Beall were on hand, and Coach Drake poignantly declared, "We need all of our young athletes to be training in dance." At that very moment, a group of young hockey players, who had been working the coat check, were spinning and jumping on the dance floor. Way to go lads!
