By Kellah Lavoie

Good fun for a good cause

Oct 1, 2011 | 11:48 AM

One day, one camera crew, one video and hundreds of pink gloves – the local health region it trying raise some big money for breast cancer research.

Sharon Griffin, director of acute care and nursing services for the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region (PAPHR), headed up the Pink Gloves Dance idea.

“We thought it would be a great, fun activity that would help us all appreciate each other throughout different departments, through the hospital that we work with,” she said. She saw the original Pink Glove Dance video, and with the competition being open to all of North America this year, knew it was something she wanted to be a part of.

On Sept. 17, for 12 hours, a camera crew and a choreographer made their way through the Victoria Hospital filming employees dancing while wearing pink gloves.

It is for a competition put on by Medline, the company that makes the gloves. People will get the chance to vote, starting Monday, and the winning video’s health region will get to donate $10,000 to breast cancer. PAPHR chose for the money to go to the Saskatoon Cancer Centre if they win.

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“It was a lot of work, but it came together really quickly,” Griffin said, explaining from the time they decided to enter, they had to have the video submitted in only two weeks.

It didn’t take much convincing to get hospital staff on board, she said. On the day of filming, the hospital was filled with laughter.

“When we would try to offer somebody assistance that was trying to get through a hallway we were videoing in they would say ‘gee if you don’t mind I would really enjoy watching.’

“I think everyone enjoys watching staff have fun and act silly,” she said.

Getting everyone organized and putting everything together took some outside help. Jennifer Maczek spent the day with staff choreographing their moves, while Big Drum Media’s Barry and Joel Mihilewicz spent time behind the camera and edited the eight hours’ worth of images captured into a video that’s about four minutes long.

“I thought it was going to be difficult to get everyone dancing,” Maczek said, calling the day crazy. Everyone was up on their feet making her job “easy.”

“My only regret of the day is that I didn’t have a loud speaker,” she said, with a laugh.

Barry said, between himself and Joel, they put in more than 100 hours editing. It wasn’t deciding what to include that was the hard part.

“It was hard to decide what to take out or what not to put in because we had so much good video,” he said, adding each department did about a minute to a minute-and-a-half of dancing.

It wasn’t all about the fun, it was also about coming together as a group to raise awareness about breast cancer, something the hospital staff sees and affected by. It gave them the chance to see how they can all work together.

“We work in a high pressure environment. We have so many demands of us and so normally it’s just pressure, pressure, pressure, and this was an opportunity to, while we’re working, while we’re in a pressured environment, to be able to appreciate each other,” Griffin said.

It’s something that Carol Gregoryk, vice president of integrated health services with PAPHR and video participant, agrees with.

“In the day-to-day chaos that we have in the Victoria Hospital, with the pressures that we are under, it was a lot of fun and we really did need that,” she said.

Winning would be the icing on the cake, Griffin said, but the biggest part is increasing awareness of breast cancer.

She said through the day, no services were disrupted within the hospital.

There are only three dances from Canada entered, and the PAPHR is the only one from Saskatchewan. To vote go to pinkglovedance.com.

See the video: PAPHR Pink Glove Dance

klavoie@panow.com