Elevate Dance Center wins big in regional competition
The past year has not been an easy one for the budding young dancers at Elevate Dance Center, having to shift from Zoom lessons to a hybrid model to back to Zoom to comply with COVID-19 regulations.
But throughout it all, the dancers kept on dancing. It paid off in a big way for them as Elevate Dance Center swept the Rainbow Dance Competition held March 19 to 21 in Reno, Nevada.
Elevate’s 28-member team performed 38 routines and received 32 Platinum awards, six Double Platinum awards, two first-place awards, one second place award, nine top 10 overall awards, the prestigious Al Gilbert Award for excellence in tap dancing, and the highest tap scoring routine for the weekend.
“We were so proud of them,” instructor Jennifer Daugavietis said. “We hadn’t seen a stage in almost two years because (of the COVID restrictions). The last time we had been on a stage was our recital in 2019.”
When the team last prepared for a competition in March 2020, half of the team were in San Mateo and received the call that the county would be implementing its shelter-at-home orders, prompting the competition to be canceled.
“We had spent all of this time and energy on all of our routines for the season, and then it was just done and everybody was sent home,” she said. Elevate also had to adapt its classes back home, and some students ended up using the same routines for solo, duo, and trio performances for this year.
After all, the instructors at Elevate have a love of dance, and that love has been passed on to their students.
Elevate was founded in 2014 by Hailey Doyle, who had danced at Patty’s Studio of Dance on East Monte Vista Avenue and took over the space following owner Patty Maltzberger’s retirement.
Starting with just three instructors and 70 dancers, Elevate has since expanded to eight teachers and 300 students and moved to its current location in the Creekside Center on Alamo Drive. With classes aimed at dancers as young as 2 and old as high school and beyond, students learn everything from ballet to tap to jazz to hip-hop.
The competition team has 29 students who compete in different events. Daugavietis, who teaches competition lyrical classes, said her goal based around “helping to mold awesome humans through the vehicle of dance.”
“It’s not just about imparting the technique, which is important,” she said. “We all have extensive experience in the fields, but it takes a special teacher to help the kids gain the confidence that they’re gonna use throughout the rest of their lives.”
The past year has been a challenging one, Daugavietis said. When the shelterat-home orders were implemented statewide, Elevate began holding classes over Zoom for the first few months of the pandemic. When restrictions were loosened up over the summer, the studio was opened back up with restrictions. Students had to wear masks and dance within taped squares, and parents were not allowed in the studio so Elevate could remain within its mandated capacity.
When new stay-at-home orders were issued following an increase in statewide hospitalizations, Elevate reverted back to Zoom classes, but it has since moved back to the hybrid model again.
“It’s been a lot of back and forth,” Daugavietis said. “We still have families who are on Zoom, and we’re doing whatever we can to make everybody — whatever their comfort level is — feel safe to dance, and we’re just protecting everybody as best as we can.”
Nonetheless, Daugavietis said all students have benefited from just being able to dance and move their bodies.
“It’s been really important for their well-being,” she said. “I feel we’ve been doing something really important for those kids.”
The Rainbow Dance Competition was initially scheduled for Hayward but was moved to Reno’s Grand Sierra Resort, which Daugavietis said meant driving in the snow. Because of COVID restrictions, students did not perform by division but rather all students from each studio would perform their routines within a scheduled block period to allow crews to clean stages and dressing rooms in between performances.
“You don’t get to see anybody else compete, which is kind of nerve-wracking,” Daugavietis said.
Additionally, she noted that the dances were very high-energy and had to be performed one after another by certain dancers.
“They went from not performing in two years to being in this super stressful situation,” she said. “We were so proud of they handled themselves and how well they did.”
Elevate competed against 29 studios throughout Northern California and ranked in the top 10 of all but two of the categories they competed in. Highlights included first place in the Rising Stars Duo/Trio ages 12 to 14 category for a tap routine choreographed to Christina Grimmie’s “Absolutely Final Goodbye,” first place in Rising Stars Small Group ages 9 to 11 for a tap routine set to “The Lotto” by Ingrid Michaelson and AJR, and an Al Gilbert Award — bestowed to exceptional tap performers — for a fivedancer routine set to Anderson Paak and Justin Timberlake’s “Don’t Slack.”
Daugavietis said everybody was floored by all the awards they won.
“We didn’t know how everybody else had done,” she said. “We didn’t see any other studio compete, so we didn’t really have very high hopes, but it was really neat to start hearing numbers from our studio being called in all those overall results.”
Daugavietis said she hoped students learned an important lesson in perseverance.
“They had been very disappointed in March of 2020,” she said. “For them to come back this year and still work hard, not knowing if they were going to compete or see the stage, that was speaking very highly of their character and their perseverance. As a teacher, that makes me so proud.”
The full results can be found at Rainbowdance. com/results/2021/578.