Weyburn dancer Autumn Alexander’s large jazz dance team placed second in the Jazz Dance category, after earlier placing fifth in the modern dance category with one of her other teams, at the World Ballet, Jazz and Modern Championships held in Poland. In the photo, she is shown with the second place trophy that her team earned on Sunday, at her third and last dance of the championships.
The 19-year-old is part of Team Canada Dance on three different teams, a large modern dance group, a small modern dance group and a large jazz group. She is the only Saskatchewan-based dancer on the teams, with many of the dancers from the Surrey-Vancouver area.
“It was awesome seeing Canada on the podium,” said Autumn’s mother Melanie. “We were told we are lucky we got silver because there’s politics involved in it. The one coach was hanging out with the judges the night before which isn’t supposed to be done. They were told they should have been first by people watching but even so, second was great!”
She noted that Alberta ended up backing out, so Autumn’s team were the only Canadians in the competition.
In the first modern competition, her small dance team competed along with 35 other groups but didn’t make it through into the finals.
The second group, the large dance group, was picked to move on to semi-finals, and they danced the same routine. They were chosen to move on to the final round, and ended up in fifth place overall.
Melanie said of the modern dance competition, “Slovenia has a very good choreographer and their two groups got first and second, so fifth was pretty exciting with the calibre of dancing there is.”
Most of Autumn’s family has accompanied her to Poland, and after the competitions are done, they are planning to do some travelling and sightseeing in Poland and area before returning to Canada.
