Teamwork Makes the Dream Work for Dance Team

The first thing you should know about Anna Weidner, the new coach for the Viterbo competitive dance team, is that she has no lack of experience. After graduating from UW-L with a degree in communications, she began working full-time for Misty Lown of Misty’s Dance Unlimited. There where she gained incredible experience working for her on the business side of the dance industry. Last spring, she was recommended to Viterbo for the head coach position.

She started dancing at the age of four at Jan’s School of Dance in Hastings, Minn., and was a member of her high school dance team. At UW-La Crosse, she was a member and choreographer for the LC Hip Hop Dance Team, and was an assistant coach for the Randolph High School Dance Team for one season. After college, she began teaching at Misty’s Dance Unlimited, while working for her full-time, and was an assistant coach for the Houston High School Dance Team.

Weidner explains, “I was also a member of La Crosse’s ABA Basketball Team’s Dance Team, the ShowTime ShowStoppers.”

When asked about her first upcoming season, she had nothing but positive things to say. “We have incredibly talented dancers on our team from all different backgrounds,” she states, “some have danced in a studio their whole life with a solid technical ballet background, and some have grown up dancing for their high school dance team perform with immense power. With that, my first goal is to get everyone on the same page. The first week of practice has been focused on learning one another’s unique skill set, which has been a blast! Once we get the choreography down, our next goal is to make it to the National Championship Preliminary Round on Friday, March 8th. Although it’s only our first year as a Varisty team, I think we can do it. The NAIA has a lot of very talented Dance Teams, but if we put in the work we can be right up there with them.”

Dance team captains Lauren McDonald, a junior nursing student, and Haley Kiefer, a senior nursing student, have a lot of experience throughout with dance. This duo, along with experienced coaching, has this dance team going into this season strong.

McDonald states, “I have felt the most accomplished my sophomore year of college [last year] when Haley and I were captains, coaches, and choreographers for our competitive dance club team. After putting in countless hours of choreographing, cutting music, teaching the dances, cleaning the dances, and nearly perfecting them, the hard work paid off for our team. We had won The One dance competition in Chicago for both our jazz and pom routine as well as virtual finals against other college teams around the country.”

Kiefer comments on some of her views regarding her team: “Teamwork is extremely important for our dance team…This team has made me a better dancer because of the various backgrounds in dance everyone has. Some girls' strengths are hip hop, others are jazz, and I believe that bringing all the styles together and teaching one another our strengths will make us a stronger team and makes all of us better dancers for competition.”

The dance team is hosting a high school dance clinic on Saturday Nov. 3. The clinic will run from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., located in the Fine Arts Center main studio. The cost is $45 per dancer and includes a Viterbo dance team shirt and lunch. The team’s first performance is on Tuesday Oct. 30, at half-time of the men’s basketball game.