A local dancer is going to Italy next month with Team Canada for the World HipHop, Electric Boogie and Break Dance Championships.
Ginger Champagne LeGrow, who has been dancing since she was three years old, is one of 18 dancers in the adult division for Team Canada’s hip hop team.
After years of being held back by prior commitments, the 19-year-old had the chance to audition for the team in 2014.
“I went, auditioned, we went through a couple different routines that were taught and then later in July I got an email that I’d made it,” LeGrow said.
“It was awesome and we were supposed to go to Germany last year but there was a few dancers that ended up not being able to make it last minute, so then they cancelled our trip, which sucked.”
However, it guaranteed the Belwood native a spot on this year’s team at the championships, the “Olympics for dance” as LeGrow refers to it, in Rimini, Italy from Oct. 21 to 25.
“We’re so proud of Ginger,” said Monica Hildebrand, owner and director of Grand River Dance Academy in Fergus, where LeGrow first began dance class. “I’ve worked with her since she was just able to walk … It’s not just a little competition, this is worlds.
“These are the best of the best that they have chosen from every country and that just gives me goose bumps that she’s a part of it.”
The team began rehearsing for the world championships in April and since August members have been practicing once a week for almost seven hours.
“I have about a half hour break, so it gets a little exhausting,” LeGrow said. “It’s really intense though, so it’s keeping me in shape.
She explained, “We have one main dance that we’re working on right now, but it’s been multiple that we’ve done and we’ve mashed them together.”
LeGrow recently learned she will also have a solo and be part of a small group in the competition.
She is trained in a plethora of dance disciplines, having completed at high level international dance exams in ballet, tap and jazz, and practiced in contemporary, pointe, latin and ballroom – but hip hop is her discipline of choice.
“I just love it, there’s different music that I can play with and there’s not specific technique, I can add my own,” she said.
“I’ll listen to certain music, or I’ll even listen to a slow contemporary or a ballet song … and I’ll do hip hop dance to it.
“I’ll play around … I’ll just listen to music that way and hip hop automatically comes to my mind.”
For LeGrow dancing is more than a passion, it’s one of the factors that has kept her physically mobile.
She has had tight joints all of her life and has made accommodations when practicing the art because her body won’t move the way everyone else’s does.
“For some of the ballet exams you need a scarf and in order to hold the scarf you have to hold it above your head, past [your ears] and she couldn’t get her arms past her head,” explained Hildebrand.
LeGrow said her doctor doesn’t understand how she’s able to dance the way she does.
“If I wasn’t in dance who knows how my body would be,” she said. “So I have to work really hard, really hard to be the same as everyone else.”
Hildebrand added, “I think the idea was that if she hadn’t gone through as far as she had with dancing, she probably wouldn’t be as mobile as she is now, so dance has really kept her limber.”
As her dance skills progressed, LeGrow began taking workshops in Toronto where she had the opportunity to work with star choreographers like Twitch, Blake McGrath, Travis Wall, Mia Michaels, Mary Murphy and Benji Schwimmer from the television show, So You Think You Can Dance, as well as Kenny Wormald, who played Ren McCormack in the 2011 remake of Footloose.
“He’s amazing,” LeGrow said. “He does tap and hip hop too … I love the way he dances and everything.”
Learning from a variety of choreographers and in a variety of disciplines has not only set LeGrow up to take on most dance challenges; it has also expanded her ability to remember choreography.
“I constantly have routines running in my head, I’m constantly dancing,” she said. “I’ll be driving and I’ll be dancing in my head … or I’ll be in the grocery store and I’ll start tap dancing.”
“Especially if I know I have choreography or recital or shows, I always have the routines running in my head constantly.”
She said she remembers routines from four years ago.
“It’s just when I hear the music it triggers something and I automatically know this part or I’ll dance to this part or I’ll imagine this move here,” she said. “It just happens.”
She also seems to have an innate ability. LeGrow said when she was just two years old she was learning the choreography to Grease and would constantly replay scenes until she mastered the dancing.
Now she is focused on rehearsing for worlds and getting to Italy. Dance is not qualified as a sport in Canada so funding is limited and difficult to come by, LeGrow said.
To raise money for her trip, LeGrow has hosted three workshops, with a fourth scheduled for Sept. 26. It costs $10 and gives participants the chance to be taught by a world-level dancer and be a part of LeGrow’s journey.
To support LeGrow on her journey, donations can be made at www.gofundme.com/gingerhiphop.
