The 85th Annual Kiwanis Music Festival Dance Highlights were held Saturday at the Cleland Community Theatre where family and friends gathered to watch the best of this years performances.
Out of hundreds of dances in the festival, the 24 most exceptional were chosen by adjudicators to be performed at the highlights.
The performances were all very entertaining with a few of them especially comical: in Like It’s Quidditch, dancers were dressed up Harry Potter-style to a remix of the song ‘Like A G-6,’ in Coffee In A Cardboard Cup, dozens of youngsters purposely sped up their dance as they got caffeinated jitters, and in My Boy Lollipop, the most adorable child that resembled a miniature Shirley Temple, Nerys Stuart, who won a stage dance medallion for her jazz performance in the festival, strutted her stuff in a little green outfit with tousled curls and a giant lollipop prop — and without a doubt, it was the crowd favourite.
At intermission, medallions, scholarships and provincial representatives were awarded to a select dozen dancers from studios around the Okanagan.
“It was great to see so many dance schools from the Okanagan enter our festival ... to keep the competition friendly, but still challenging for the dancers,” said Danica Poole, the dance captain for the Penticton Kiwanis Music Festival and teacher at Okanagan Dance Studios.
A few dancers cleaned house like Emily Cowling, who walked (ever-so-gracefully) away with 10 awards including the most prestigious major stage dance scholarship, and was chosen as the modern dance senior provincial representative.