Brevard Dancer’s Life About to Heat up in Miami
Palm Bay High grad part of Miami’s pro dance team
By Autumn Shrum
Florida Today
As a rookie on the Miami Heat Dancers team, Michelle Lowry doesn’t quite know what to expect when she performs tonight for the Heat’s first official game of the season. But maybe not knowing is half the thrill.
“I cannot wait until we get in the arena and everyone’s screaming,” said Lowry, a 2005 Palm Bay High grad who auditioned for and made the 2009-10 dance team in July. “It’s going to be so much fun.”
A dancer since age 4, Lowry has been trained in ballet, pointe, tap, jazz, lyrical and hip-hop. While in high school, she performed with the Palm Bay High Precision, the school’s dance team. She’s always wanted to dance professionally, but she wanted a college education, too. After high school, she went off to Florida State, and in May, graduated with a bachelor of science in marketing.
“It’s hard to be a dancer as a career,” she said. “People do it, but you really do live paycheck to paycheck. So I decided to go get a degree and explore different areas as far as careers are concerned.”She didn’t get many chances to dance in college, so after graduation, she decided to audition for pro teams. Of about 200 who auditioned for the Heat dance team, 25 made it. The process was rigorous and competitive, and you always had to be “on,” Lowry said.
“It was the first team I tried out for,” she said. “It was a weeklong audition process, and I made it, so it’s pretty exciting. And I moved my life down here (Miami) a week later.”
Lowry’s plan was to be a part-time dancer and a full-time graduate student–she’d been accepted into an MBA program at Florida International University. But the school told her she couldn’t do both because of the program’s no-work policy.
She had a decision to make.
“It really sucks because that’s one of the things I definitely wanted to do is get my MBA, but I’ll get it and I’ll get it on my own terms,” she said. “But right now, this is something that is once in a lifetime, so I had to take advantage of it.”
Lowry had a pretty good idea of what it would be like to be part of a professional dance team. Her older sister, Jennifer, cheered for the Atlanta Falcons and danced for the Washington Wizards.
“You meet a lot of great people,” Lowry said. “The dancers you dance with, a lot of those women go on and do amazing things.”
The Miami Heat Dancers have been voted fans’ favorite NBA dance team for the past three seasons.
Lowry has a yearlong contract with the Heat. If she wants to be on the team again next year, she’ll have to try out again.
In the meantime, she’s going to enjoy the practices, games and life in Miami.
“It’s like a whole ‘nother world down here. . . . South Beach is like a mile from my house, so it’s crazy,” she said.
Lowry’s mom, Glenda Hege, and stepdad, Don Hege, live in Palm Bay.
