By Caitlin Brezinski

PACI group working to dance ‘with the stars’

Nov 23, 2014 | 6:10 PM

As part of the efforts to raise money for a dance trip to Toronto, the Prince Albert Collegiate Institute (PACI) dance team hosted a trade show on Saturday.

PACI will take 13 dance students to the biggest city in Canada for a convention called IDance – it’s put on by the team behind So You Think You can Dance.

“The kids are really excited because they’ll be dancing with some of the dance celebrities that they see on T.V,” said dance teacher Alicia Wotherspoon.

Wotherspoon said they have been doing different kinds of fundraising within the last two weeks.

“The students are extremely excited to go and so they’re excited too to be starting to fundraise and trying to get their money in so,” she said.

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The dance program at PACI started two years ago. Last year the school converted one of the classrooms into a dance studio.

“The next step in my dreams and my goals are to get kids that are really committed to dancing to see different parts of our country and dance with different people in the business and people in the industry so it’s a great learning opportunity for all of them,” Wotherspoon said.

The group will head off to the convention over the February break next year.  

One of the dancers, Breanne Njaa, said she is excited to see the hard work to fund their first dance trip paying off.

“We’ve been trying to have a trip for a very long time and it’s coming together.”

Individually, each person needs to raise $1,088 and said they have different things like the tradeshow to help them get there.  Some of the dancers are working bingos or putting money away from their jobs.

“Right now this is probably one of the biggest things we’re trying to work for,” Njaa said.    

Jenna Brown said the dance program brought her back into dance in Grade 9 after years away from the art.

“I’m really excited for [the trip],” she said.  “We’ll get to all travel together as a group of friends.”

Home economics teacher Rebecca Tilford put her skills to work selling cupcakes as one of the 22 vendors. This is her third fundraiser through Tilford Treats.  

“I do cupcakes from scratch, a variety of flavours with lots of different fillings,” she said. “I also do birthday parties and weddings with a lot of chocolate work.”

Janelle Meyers and her mom were selling barrettes, headbands, bracelets made from recycled belts, sock monkeys and bags.

“We’ve been selling at farmer’s market for about two years now and we’ve been doing the craft sales for about as long,” she said.    

Each vendor table cost $30 and the proceeds will go to members of the dance team working at the fundraiser. 

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