FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
10/25/11
CONTACT: Anna Nadon, nadon@wisc.edu
MADISON – When Anna Nadon came to University of Wisconsin-Madison as a freshman she wanted to try something new. Finding Badger Ballroom Dance Team meant trying a new activity for Nadon, but it also meant finding an instant community.
“I went from having one or two friends here my first week to having 50 friends I could talk to. The community and the fun of dancing has kept me around so long and now, here I am, captain,” Nadon says.
Now, as a junior and captain of Badger Ballroom Dance Team, Nadon is helping to organize Badger Ballroom Dancesport Classic, UW-Madison’s first intercollegiate ballroom competition on Saturday, Oct. 29 at Varsity Hall at Union South.
Badger Ballroom Dance Team instructor and grad student Youming Yang hopes the ballroom competition will raise even more awareness of the Badger Ballroom Dance Team as well as social ballroom dancing in the Madison community.
Badger Ballroom Dance Team has extended invitations to 20 schools in the Midwest to attend the competition, hoping to draw schools with the promise of respected national ballroom finalists serving as judges and a professional performance showcase. Organziers hope the competition will boast more than 200 dancers competing, Nadon says.
Yang, Nadon and the rest of Badger Ballroom Dance Team have been working to make the competition a reality, including hiring judges, a “scrutineer” to add up dancers’ scores, professional performers and a DJ.
Badger Ballroom Dance Team is still looking for sponsors from the community and volunteers to help the event run smoothly.
Although competitions such as the Badger Ballroom Dancesport Classic are a key component of Badger Ballroom Dance Team the main goal of the team remains teaching people how to dance ballroom.
“We firmly believe anyone can be taught to dance, no experience or partner necessary,” Yang says. “That’s how I learned to dance.”
For Yang, his love of ballroom took time to develop, despite four years of a friend’s urging to join the ballroom team during undergrad at University of California-Berkeley. But after one community class following graduation, Yang was hooked, and has been involved in Badger Ballroom Dance Team at UW-Madison as a grad student for four years.
While ballroom dancing is similar to intramural sports in its athleticism, it is first and foremost a dance and not a sport because it is artistic and tells a story, Yang says.
On campus, Badger Ballroom Dance Team has grown to include 60 members and three professional coaches the team brings in from Chicago to teach standard and Latin ballroom.
Throughout the year Badger Ballroom focuses on preparing for two to three competitions each semester.
“Competing is a very interesting animal. You have pounds of gel in your hair, tons of makeup, and you go and dance for seven hours during the day and it’s a lot of fun. It puts it into perspective more than social dancing. It gives you confidence,” Nadon says.
Nadon says the team always likes to see new faces, from total beginners to dancers with years of experience. Above all, the team exists to teach people ballroom, Yang says.
For Nadon, her involvement in Badger Ballroom has created a lifelong passion for the activity.
“That’s one thing that’s really great about ballroom, it doesn’t matter how old you are you can still go out and social dance even though you may not be able to do it the same when you’re 50 as when you were 20. There’s a lady in my hometown, she’s 97, and she goes to social dance every Friday night. I want to be her when I’m older and just dance all night,” Nadon says.
A $110 membership fee covers lessons three times a week, practice two times a week and visits from professional coaches each weekend. For more information, visit the Badger Ballroom Dance Team at http://ballroom.rso.wisc.edu/index.html. For more information on the Badger Ballroom Dancesport Classic, visit http://www.badgerballroomdancesportclassic.com/.
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