Tigard’s Stephanie Anderson is now a Blazer Dancer

By Mikel Kelly
The Tigard Times

As odd as it may sound, Stephanie Anderson quit her full-time job as a development assistant in university advancement at Southern California’s Chapman University just to try for a hard-to-get, part-time position in Portland.

A member of Tigard High School’s class of 2005, Anderson was recently named one of the 16 new BlazerDancers, following a rigorous July audition process that drew 11 existing members of the dance team along with 77 new hopefuls.

“The BlazerDancers is something I wanted to do for a long time,” said Anderson, whose resume lists dance training and experience at Chapman, with the Tigerettes dance team in high school, with the Junior Blazer Dancers and early years at the Westside Dance Academy in Tigard. “I felt I would have kicked myself if I didn’t try out this year. It was very hard to leave California, but I knew it was worth it.”

Anderson is now one of four women on the Blazers dance team with Tigard backgrounds. The others are Cristi Bitz, Leisel Stohr and Eri Janagawa.

What is it about Tigard that seems to inspire (not to mention actually qualify) young women to become a BlazerDancer?

Anderson couldn’t help but laugh about that, but then she gave it some thought because it had obviously crossed her mind.

“We all have some background in dance training at Westside Dance Academy,” she said. “And we were all on the Tigerettes.

“Tigard has groomed us well for being on a dance team,” she added.

The daughter of Steve and Mary Ann Anderson of Tigard, Stephanie graduated from the Conservatory of Music at Chapman in 2009. Although she’s always pursued dance, she also sings and acts.

“I just love to perform” she said. “It’s such an adrenaline rush.”

And the Rose Garden crowds for Trail Blazer games are big, loud and appreciative, she pointed out.

Being a BlazerDancer is not a full-time gig.

“We do get paid minimally for games and appearances,” she said. “It is definitely a part-time job.”

But it was not an easy one to get.

On the second day of tryouts, the field of hopefuls was cut down to 33 finalists – still more than twice as many as needed.

“The finalists spent the next week going through interviews with Trail Blazers representatives,” according to the team’s website, “practicing the three finals routines that they learned and creating a solo routine to perform at the finals.

“When the dancers arrived for the finals at the Winningstad Theater in Portland’s Center for the Performing Arts, they were surprised with an additional dance to perform and only one hour to prepare for it. Luckily, this was a free-style ‘hot time-out’ dance that didn’t require any choreography, but instead was meant to showcase the dancers’ personalities and their ability to have fun and play to the crowd.”

After they’d performed five routines, the dancers’ scores were tallied by the judges, and the audition process was over. Then they had to wait 24 hours to find out whether they had made the team.

“It was very intense,” Anderson said of the audition process. “You had to come ready – and I did feel ready.”

The “hot time-out” portion was unexpected, she said.

“That was a surprise, but you just kind of had to go for it,” she said. “You just think, ‘Oh, well, I’ve got nothing to lose,’ so you just go out there and do it.”

Meanwhile, she’s looking for other ways to keep busy, “whether it will be at the Rose Garden with BlazerDancers – hopefully for many seasons! – or on the theater stage while also keeping up with singing.”

“I love teaching and hope to pass along this love to young children,” she said. “I enjoy teaching dance classes and also choreographing for various dance teams and studios. I plan on helping a couple of dance teams around the area this next year with choreography.

Other long-term goals, she said, include working in a Portland-area university “on the administrative side.”

So, even though she’s technically only working part-time, Anderson is on a high right now.

“This is a huge deal,” she said. “I don’t know how I can fully express how excited I am.”