Right now Paige Tirs, 23, is facing the calm before the storm.
For a second year in a row, the St. Albert tapper has entered The Young & Free Dance Challenge that guarantees its first place winner a cool $3,000.
Last year, she came in second, pocketing $1,000. This year she’s aiming for the top.
Unlike the arduous So You Think You Can Dance, where dancers are expected to weekly hoist their dancing chops to a new level, this competition is more low-key.
Sponsored by Servus Credit Union, dancers 17 to 25 simply submit a video one to three minutes in length of themselves dancing. The 31 videos were posted online and fans vote until Monday, April 1 at noon.
“Last year I was so gratified at the amount of support I got from family and friends. It was amazing to have won second place, but also to know I have so much support behind me from the community,” said Tirs.
A part-time dance teacher who continually reinvests her hard-earned salary in ongoing dance training, she applied her winnings to attending workshops at the Vancouver International Tap Dance Festival.
This time around, she’s applied her savvy choreography into a two-minute tap dance backed by the smooth, funky vocals of John Legend’s Rolling In the Deep. Any gains from this competition will go to Tap Motif, an 11-day dance intensive offered in Greece this summer.
“They only take 20 dancers and 20 musicians from around the world. I want to better understand how to improvise, how to work with different genres of dance, how music works and how to understand time signatures. It’s an opportunity to better understand what music has to offer,” explained Tirs.
Not only do the posted videos exhibit different styles of dance – ballet, belly-dance, hip hop, ballroom and zombie pop – but the quality of videos range from jerky cellphone entries to semi-professional polished and edited submissions.
“There’s some pretty cool videos so it’s really anybody’s game,” Tirs said.
As a third year commerce student at MacEwan University, Tirs also sees the huge promotional potential a video competition like this has for unknown dancers.
“It’s a great way to use your marketing skills. From the business standpoint, it’s a great way to utilize your knowledge and gain a bigger audience.”
To vote visit www.youngfreealberta.com
