A group of local dancers will be taking part in a province-wide dance competition this weekend in Chatham.
The Shine Dance Competition is taking place at the Chatham Capitol Theatre from Thursday morning to Sunday evening. Hundreds of dancers from across Ontario will compete in the competition including 150 dancers from PURE Dance Academy, which has studios in Chatham, Wallaceburg and Lakeshore.
Dancers from PURE range from age four to 19 and competition will feature a wide variety of styles including hip hop, jazz and ballet.
Kent Wilmore, one of the directors at PURE Dance Academy, said the dancers spend hours perfecting their skills, adding that it becomes like a full-time job to them.
"The dancers, some of them prepare about 20 hours a week when they're dancing competitively. So its a very serious time commitment on their part. There's different levels of commitment but its between 10 and 20 hours a week in practice and preparation they're doing and they're doing that 10 months out of the year," he said.
The local team just got back from a few tournaments in the United States where they finished at the top of the podium. According to Wilmore, one of the team's hip hop numbers recently won first place recognition out of 700 numbers during a competition in Detroit.
"It's pretty impressive that folks from Chatham-Kent are able to compete at that level. I would say the US competitions are really the highest level of competitions that you can find in North America and we have teams competing at that level," he said.
Anyone looking to cheer on the local team can do so for free.
