Raptors Dance Pak Brings it to Montreal

By Victor Swoboda
Montreal Gazette

It’s the fourth quarter, the score’s tied, and twenty thousand fans at the Air Canada Centre are screaming for the Toronto Raptors to pull out a win — time for Ashley and Nina to go to work. The two are among 14 young women of the Toronto Raptors Dance Pak, the NBA’s sole cheerleading team in Canada.

“You’re entire 360 degrees is your audience — you have four fronts basically — so just getting oriented and having the fans cheering so loudly when the game’s so exciting and having that energy — it’s just a different experience,” smiled dark-haired Ashley, 22, during an interview Thursday in Montreal. Ashley, a fourth-year Dance Pak member, Nina and two other Dance Pak members will be performing Friday night at the Bell Centre when the Raptors meet the New York Knicks in the city’s first NBA exhibition match.

“We have to keep the fans going and hyped up. If we’re losing, it’s our chance to keep people pumped,” said Nina, a 20-year-old blond who is in her second season with the Dance Pak.

Both young women, who eventually hope to perform in dance videos or music concerts, had a varied dance background of tap, jazz and ballet when they more or less casually went to the Dance Pak annual audition, an event that this year attracted some 200 hopefuls.

“My friend Sophia and I went, honestly, just for fun to see if we could make it, and, if not, just have fun and take a free class,” Ashley said. “And we both made it.”

Candidates were weeded until 20 were called back for interviews with choreographer/manager Amberley Waddell, a former Dance Pak member from Waterloo, Ont., who once danced in Los Angeles and Las Vegas in shows with Bette Midler and Beyoncé.

During the season, the Dance Pak holds two-and-a-half-hour practices three times a week. Dancers learn between 20 and 30 routines a season. Ashley compared their non-stop routines to sprinting for two minutes, all the while having to smile. Dance Pak members arrive three-and-a-half hours before a game for rehearsals that might involve changes of formation or even last-minute changes in choreography.

“It keeps your brain working,” Ashley noted.

Not that their brains are otherwise idle. Like several other Dance Pak members, Ashley and Nina juggle their Raptors job with university studies. Nina is in York University’s dance program. Ashley studies at the University of Toronto.

“People always ask how can you do full-time school as well as dance for the Raptors, but I wouldn’t be able to do school without doing dance,” Ashley said. “Dance takes my stress away from school, and then the physical stress of dance is taken away when I’m studying.”

There are moments, though, when the juggling act can get stressful.

“During midterms is exactly when the NBA season starts picking up with lots of games. We start getting more sick or getting colds because of the physical stress on our body. Last year, I noticed my ankle was giving out and I couldn’t figure it out. But I realized it was because of the demands from the job and school.”

Ashley’s friend, Sophia, danced with Dance Pak for two years, but left after she was accepted to medical school.

As NBA representatives, Dance Pak has travelled across Canada and to some exotic places, too, like Cancun, Mexico in September, and last August to Shanghai, China, where NBA star Kobe Bryant participated in a charity celebrity game.

“The fans in China are just the next level,” Nina said. “I came off teary-eyed. I’ve never danced at something that big.”