Click here and check out the Knicks City Dancers on SportsIllustrated.com!

I’m on a little road trip. First stop Charlotte’s Time Warner Arena:

The Lady Cats and director Brandii McCoy were wonderful hosts and I had a fabulous time and tonight’s Bobcats-Clippers game. Photos coming next week!

Current Sixers Dancer Kate and former Sixers Dancer Amber-Joi have started a have started a website called Phillyin.com.

Their mission?

To take an active role in promoting the “up-and-coming” City of Brotherly Love, through the eyes and ears of the personalities of phillyin.com. The focus will be on setting the record straight about what Philly has to offer, while helping to cultivate and document this on-going transformation from “old school” caterpillar to “A-list” butterfly, and having a ton of fun along the way.

Amber-Joi also has a post up about the upcoming Sixers Dancers Alumni performance scheduled for this Monday.

[Back on the Court: Part One]

[Phillyin.com]

Knicks City Dancer Dana began her dance training at age two with her first performance coming just one year later. She danced for most of her life at the world renowned Broadway Dance Center in Manhattan New York.

At Lehigh University she continued to dance, becoming the university Dance Team’s choreographer the very first semester of her freshman year. She was Team Captain  for three years and the team won a gold medal along with best hip hop and best precision at NYCDA with her original Choreography.

After graduating with a BA in Behavioral Neuroscience, Dana began purusing a dance career full-time.   She’s been an instructor for twelve years and have taught all ages and levels in hip hop, street Jazz, modern and ballet. She’s taught for Triple Essence Dance Studio (Brooklyn), Ronnie Clifford School of Dance (Bethlehem, PA), Elite Dancentre (Rockville Centre, NY), Oceaside Dance Conservatory (Oceanside, NY),  Rider University, NYU, and the NJ Emerald’s Semi-pro team.

1. Behavioral Neuroscience is not a major most folks would associate with Dance. Why did you choose it?

I wanted to take advantage of a unique program that Lehigh offered. Originally, I had intended on studying biology and I took neuroscience as an elective. I ended up being really good at it and finding it fascinating so I decided to stick with it. I chose not to study dance because I wanted to have a safety net outside of the entertainment industry. You never know what life has in store and god forbid I ever get injured I wanted a reliable degree to fall back on.
2. You’ve had a chance to travel the world, what are some of the more memorable places you’ve danced?

I would have to say that of all the places I have danced that performing at Madison Square Garden, in my hometown New York, has been the most memorable. I am a New Yorker born and bred so it was the ultimate rush to get out there in front of all those fans and represent this great city. I love to travel and I have been blessed enough to travel around the world to some truly beautiful places. I have loved every place I have been and performed but there’s no place like home.

3. What sort of organizations or dance teams could benefit from having you as a Guest Choreographer?

I do a lot of choreography for studios, university dance teams, competitions, semi-pro teams, pro-teams and dance conventions. I think I could work with any type of team or organization and make the experience beneficial. My choreography is completely original and ranges in style from hip hop to street jazz and everything in between. I have been a choreographer for a long time and teaching is something I love to do and as a choreographer I am a chameleon. So, I find that I can do great work for any dancers at any age or skill level because I adapt well to the needs of any organization. No matter what people that work with me are guaranteed to have a lot of fun.

4. What do you enjoy most about teaching/choreographing?
The thing I enjoy most about choreographing is watching other dancers have fun doing my work and performing my piece. I love when people love what they are dancing because that comes through in their performance. It’s always amazing to watch something that starts as a few ideas come to life on a team or a group. It’s cool too because a lot of the time when I am teaching I learn so much by seeing how my students and other dancers use the material they are given. I am always really inspired by the people I work with.

5. What have you got planned next? Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Right now I am doing a lot of big choreography jobs. I will be going on a countrywide tour beginning at the end of March in Baltimore working with teams and organizations all over America that will conclude with a major convention in Tampa in the fall. I plan on taking each day as it comes and performing and teaching as much as possible. This is my life’s work and I always feel blessed by every new opportunity. I plan to relocate to LA by the end of next year to try my luck on the west coast.

In five years I will have achieved some more of my bigger performance goals and danced at some more big venues. I would like to have opened a studio on the east coast and still be blessed enough to perform and teach every day.

[Dana at the KCD Website]

[Dana's Website]

The general public should keep in mind that in addition to the incredible time sacrifices that professional cheerleaders and dancers make, there’s always the risk of physical injury.

Tisiphani, a captain and three-year veteran, of the Bucks Energee! dance team, suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her knee during practice last week.

The injury will be keep her sidelined the remainder of the season.

We wish Tisiphani a full and speedy recovery.

[Tisiphani on the Bucks Website]

The Orlando Magic Dancers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleaders made a joint appearance at ESPN: The Weekend, last month. And the FOX Orlando TV affiliate has quite a few photos of the two squads.

[Bucs Cheerleaders and Magic Dancers Gallery]

Lots of new photos of the Atlanta Hawks A-Town Dancers on SportsIllustrated.com. Click here to check ‘em out!

“True Beauty” will premiere on MONDAY, MAY 31 (10:02-11:00 p.m., ET) on ABC, following the regular time period premiere of “The Bachelorette”.

Executive producers Tyra Banks (“The Tyra Banks Show,” “America’s Next Top Model”) and Ashton Kutcher (executive producer of “Punk’d” and “Beauty and the Geek”) team up again to put their spin on beauty in Sin City. Five gorgeous females and five hot men will live together at Planet Hollywood Hotel while they compete (they think) to become the “Face of Vegas.” Unbeknownst to them, they’ll be deliberately challenged by moral situations to see if they really are kind, generous and compassionate and have what it takes to be truly beautiful inside and out.

The women contestants are Amy Schmoldt, a 22-year-old bartender from New Brunswick, New Jersey; Erika Othen, a 25-year-old singer/cocktail waitress from Long Island, New York; Liz Parada, a 31-year-old model from Hollywood, Florida; Michelle Mozek, a 21-year-old dancer from Dallas, Texas; and Regina Villano, a 22-year-old teen pageant queen from Tabernacle, New Jersey. The men are Craig Francyzk, a 29-year-old retail manager from Winnipeg, Canada; David Palmer, a 24-year-old DJ/astrologer from Huntington Beach, California; JD Scott a 26-year-old real estate agent from Los Angeles, California; Michael Allen, a 25-year-old actor/model from Miami, Florida; and Taylor Bills, a 24-year-old former professional athlete from Irvine, California.

The attractive contestants assume they’re being judged solely on their physical attributes when, in fact, the episodes will showcase two sides of each person, one that displays outer beauty as well as one that exhibits inner beauty. One person will be eliminated each week based on their behavior and how well they ranked in each challenge, as they’re evaluated and critiqued by the judges. At the end of eight episodes, one winner will be declared who has successfully demonstrated both inner and outer beauty. That winner will receive a $100,000 cash prize and a feature article in People magazine.

Hey, haven’t we seen this before?

by Katie Engelhart
Macleans

It happened on February 3rd, during the half-time show of the Toronto Raptors vs. New Jersey Nets game. One moment, the inflatable Toronto Raptor is bopping along beside an especially spirited Dance Pak cheerleader. The next moment, that same exuberant blonde is swallowed whole.

“The Raptor. Having some fun with the cheerleaders,” narrates the announcer. “Wow. Devoured! That’s… that’s wrong!

Video footage of the incident—dubbed “Raptor devours cheerleader”—has since gone viral, with close to 3 million views on YouTube, hundreds of blog links, and tributes on a host of daily news networks.

It has also been played under a number of titles, though the understanding is never lost: “Maskot slukte cheerleader,” (Norway’s TV2underholdning),“Toronto Raptors mascotte eet cheerleader,” (Holland’s VKMag.com),“Maskottchen fristt Cheerleader auf,” (Germany’s RP Online), “Un ‘raptor,’ engullidor de cheerleaders” (Spain’s Eurosport).

Some have taken creative license with the footage, speculating about the Raptor’s new taste for human meat. “Did she taste like chicken?” pondered letroxxx in a comment on YouTube. “Is that Tiger Woods in there?” wondered Samoancanadian.

Others have debated the significance of the stunt. One blogger pointed out the skit was performed on Charles Darwin Day: “The important thing,” he wrote, “is that it demonstrates the concept of natural selection and survival of the fittest.” [Actually, Darwin Day is on February 12th.]

Most recently, a more sophisticated version of the stunt was attempted. Sarah C. (she wasn’t able to give me her last name, as per Raptors Dance Pak rules) was the dancer involved. She wouldn’t tell me what it was like inside the Raptor’s mouth—“we like to keep how we do the move a little bit of a secret”—but she says it all went according to plan: “[The Raptor] ate me and then spit out a man [who was also inside the costume.] The Dance Pak wanted him to give me back, so he spit me out, too.”

Weeks later, the Toronto Raptors franchise is still fielding media calls. “We’re totally surprised,” Anton Wright, manager of game operations for the team, told Maclean’s, noting that this is the most attention the Raptor has ever generated. For Wright, the stunt speaks for itself: “When you see [the Raptor] chomping on a dancer, fans and people on the opposite team are like: what’s going on? It’s pretty fun.”

Still, the stunt’s inherent entertainment factor does not exactly hold up as an explanation of the YouTube sensation. For one, there’s the simple fact that our darlingist dinosaur has tasted fresh cheerleader before. Here, for instance, the Raptor enjoys a spunky University of Buffalo cheerleader with a ponytail.

That, and the fact that the Houston Rocket’s mascot Clutch (a bear) has been cheerleader-devouring for years. In fact, Clutch was the first professional mascot to own a costume with cheerleader-devouring capabilities.

The Toronto Raptors do not allow the Raptor himself to be interviewed, but I caught up with Robert Boudwin, a.k.a. Clutch, this week.

“We do [the trick] about five or six times a year at Rockets games. And then I do it on the road,” Boudwin told me. “We’ve done that bit probably about 60 or 70 times now…And we’ve done it with countless cheerleaders.”

The first person Clutch ate, in fact, was not a cheerleader, but a child dressed up in the opposing team’s jersey. Since then, he’s unveiled some creative variations on the theme. “We’ve done it with PA announcers…. The PA announcer is talking on the mic and we eat her and then she continues to talk from the inside of the costume: ‘Hey, let me out of here. It’s dark in here. Oooh, God. What did you eat?’”

It works pretty simply, Boudwin tells me. Inside the costume, Boudwin wears a power belt with a battery and fan that is constantly sucking in air from the outside. The mouth has a trap door built into it, sealed with a thick piece of Velcro. From inside, Boudwin unlatches the Velcro, throws the mouth over the child/cheerleader, lifts the child/cheerleader onto his shoulder, and then seals the mouth before too much air is released.

I tell him that’s an impressive feat for an aging bear. (Boudwin has been Clutch for 15 years now). “Nah, they’re only 50 pounds for kids,” he laughs. “One hundred pounds for the girls. It’s not like you’re picking up a 200-pound man.” [Though Boudwin admits he’s done that, too.]

So is the T.Rap just a sorry copycat? In fact, it’s more accurate to say that Clutch and the Raptor have a special friendship: a bond that has placed them at the forefront of mascot innovation.

It all goes back 15 years. Boudwin was, by then, an expert in his field. As an undergrad, he started the mascot program at the University of Delaware, later moving to Houston after a successful audition for the part of Clutch. In 1997 or 1998, Boudwin heard of a new kind of inflatable mascot that had been introduced at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Impressed, he contacted Signs and Shapes International, the company behind the costume, and discussed the possibility of building an inflatable version of his popular character. “Air Clutch was the first [inflatable mascot] in pro sports,” he boasts.

Air Clutch worked well…for a while. But Boudwin quickly tired of it and moved on to “the next phase,” an airhead doll—“a shorter, fatter [mascot] that can roll… and that have these trap doors in the mouth.”

A year or two later, says Boudwin, the Raptor called. Soon, he had an airhead of his own. Today, the Rockets and the Raptors are the only teams in the NBA league to have airhead mascots. Clutch and the Raptor have even performed side-by-side, gobbling down Dallas Mavericks dancers at an All-Star game.

For Boudwin, sharing the idea with his good friend just made sense. “I mean, a lot of the NBA mascots talk very regularly,” he says. “The general rule is that the guys that have been in it longer tend to associate with each other,” says Boudwin, noting he’s closest with the Raptor, the Utah Jazz Bear, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Rumble the Bison, and the Pacers’ cat, Boomer.

Asked why the Raptor’s stunt was so popular when Clutch has been at the same thing for years, Boudwin just shrugs: “I mean there’s a lot of stuff out there on YouTube.”

In any event, it seems likely that ‘Raptor devours cheerleader’ is only the beginning. Scott Bowen, production manager of Signs and Shapes International, says he has met with the Raptor on a number of occasions to develop new features. “We’ve always got some R&D going,” he admits. Past brainstorming sessions have resulted in the mini inflatable Raptor and a pair of adaptable feet the Raptor mounts to stilts or rollerblades.

Still, game operations manager Anton Wright is cautious about promising more cheerleader devouring in the future. “We talked about it,” he concedes, “ and we don’t want to do it too much, because it gets boring then. Then it’s like: oh yeah, he’s eating another cheerleader again. He’s chomping another dancer… You just want to do it a couple times, where it still has that kind of appeal and that kind of, ‘What is he going to do? I wonder what he’s going to chomp on next time?’”

[Toronto Raptors Dance Pak]

From The Oakland Press, :

Dancing with our Local Stars — a benefit for the American Red Cross Haiti Earthquake Relief — is 7 p.m. to midnight Saturday, March 13 at the San Marino Club, 1685 E. Big Beaver in Troy.

Local celebrity appearances include: Nicole Blaszczyk (Miss Michigan), Lila Lazarus (TV personality), Eric Hipple (ex-NFL quarterback), Heather Zara (WDIV traffic reporter, former Detroit Automotion Dancer and Detroit Fury Cheerleader), Natalie Sentz (WDIV reporter), Ryan Field (Fox Sports Detroit reporter), Jeannette Greco Pawlowski (Mrs. Michigan), Deena Centofanti (Fox 2 health reporter), Dr. Michael Gray (renowned cosmetic surgeon), Damara Anderson (WWJ producer and reporter), John Poppeo (WDIV photo journalist), Scott Lusader (former Detroit Tiger), and more.

The benefit will include a dance competition with local celebrities, a dance showcase by professional dancers, general dancing throughout the evening to live entertainment by the Steve King & the Dittilies, an hors d’oeuvre buffet with a cash bar, a silent auction and an opportunity for you to dance with a local star — 100 percent of proceeds from the auction and the dance with the celebrity will go to the American Red Cross to support its Disaster Relief Fund. Admission is $25 per person. Everyone is welcome, singles and married couples.

[Follow Heather on Twitter]