Heidi Jensen leaps and touches her toes during the Pirouettes' routine on Tuesday, Dec. 12.The Paynesville Pirouettes have had a very trying week and a half.
On Saturday, Dec. 9, the team traveled to Winthrop for their first competition. Normally dancers have a chance to perform a couple of times before they compete, but this was a different situation.
The team placed fifth out of the five teams in the Class A division.
The Pirouettes danced the way they had practiced with one exception. The beginning of their song had been accidently chopped off. They had two hours to learn an entirely new beginning before they had to compete.
"I was really impressed with the way they focused and understood that they were under the gun. They proved to me that they can handle turning up the pressure at our practices," captain Cyndi Bollman stated.
Winthrop results
1. New Ulm Cathedral - 72.8
2. Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop - 67.4
3. Tracy - 54.0
4. St. Charles - 49.4
5. Paynesville - 44.0
Despite the minor setback at Winthrop, the Pirouettes put their uniforms back on for a Tuesday night performance at the boys' basketball game.
They were feeling a bit nervous with the pressure of dancing in front of their biggest critics, their family and friends. They were calmed with the fact that their music was back to the way they had practiced it since the beginning of the season, though.
Despite waiting on the court for two and a half minutes for the music to start, the team danced well. Many of the younger dancers felt more confident with themselves.
Coach Rebecca Hoey and captains Lindsey Savage and Cyndi Bollman, all agreed that the dance needed to change again in order to have more impact. So at Wednesday's practice another part of the dance was changed. They practiced it again on Thursday morning and felt secure with showing it to their audience that night.
Many of the dancers were very nervous as there were more people at Thursday's performance than Tuesday's. They weren't quite sure if they would meet expectations.
All went well and the Pirouettes impressed many people. The people most impressed were those that were there on Tuesday night. They didn't think it was possible to see such a huge improvement over two days.
"It was so much more fun when the crowd cheered. I wish they would do that all the time," freshman dancer Amanda Burlingame said, after she completed the dance on Thursday evening.
Crowd support is a big part of danceline and we all thank those of you who cheered for us while we were dancing.
We hope you will be there to support us at our next performance tomorrow night.