Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

Members of the Junior Shag Dance Team gathered May 17 at the Center Stage Dance Studio in China Grove for the final practice on their dance routine before heading to the USA Grand Nationals Dance Championship held in Atlanta, Georgia, over the Memorial Day weekend.

Composed of juniors from the Southeast region of the United States, the 12-member team includes Saddie Honeycutt of Landis, Maci Walters of Trinity, Claire Flogel of Winston-Salem, Zane Morgan of Siler City, Hunter Matthews of Cedar Creek, Joel Sogluizzo of Wilson, Parker Caldwell of Wilmington, Jackson McLaughlin of Greenville, South Carolina, Abigail and Rebecca Hodges of Jacksonville, Florida and Abrielle and Will Benoit of Orange Park, Florida.

Abigail Hodges said they were at a summer event called Junior SOS and that’s where most of the team met and became friends. Someone on the board of the team approached them, she said, and asked if they would be interested in joining the Junior Shag Dance Team.

“So we came up for tryouts in November one year, and we’ve been on the team ever since,” Hodges said.

While the group’s homes and years of dancing experience vary, they have come together as a team and have been working with goals of going to the national championships, along with The French Open Swing Dance event in Paris, France, and The Open Swing Dance Championship in Burbank, California.

Practices first started in February and have continued at least once a month until the competitions with the team all coming together along with members of the team staff.

These include Ashley and Tobitha Stewart of Landis, team directors, choreographer and coaches; Joey and Jennifer Sogluizzo of Wilson, team choreographer and coaches; Kayla Henley of Burlington, team director, choreographer and coach; Michael and Leanne Norris of Columbia, South Carolina, nationals event directors and team choreographer and coach; Gene and Nancy Pope of Durham, team advisors; and Brennar Goree of St. Augustine, Florida, who founded the JSDT in 2008. Goree helped to choreograph the program but has been unable to come due to his being active in the military.

“He still helps when his time will allow,” said Tobitha Stewart.

Joey Sogluizzo said they have lots of good people helping to lead the charge, but credited “Ashley and Tobitha really are like the glue that keeps everything together.”

The USA Grand Nationals and the French Swing Open are back to back, and once the team returns from Atlanta, they will be home for a day before they fly to the French Swing Open, to which they received a special invitation to attend, said Stewart.

At the Grand Nationals, they will be competing in the team division with at least five other teams competing this year, and possibly more, she said.

To get to this point of competition, Walters said they have gone to different local competitions to start and “get to know more people where you can discover more partnerships there” and gradually move up.

Then, she said, there’s the National Shag Dance Championships, which are at North Myrtle Beach in March and then progressing up to the ones they will be competing at during the next few weeks and the U.S. Open which is in November.

Stewart said the team is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and “these kids worked really hard to fundraise to cover their expenses so their families don’t have to pay as much out of pocket. They individually fundraised, we fundraised as a team too” as she said they had held a raffle to help cover the flights to Paris.

Traveling this far is a new experience for all of the youth.

Hunter Matthews said this is “a pretty amazing and exciting experience to be able to showcase our lovely dance to the world and show them what Carolina Shag is and be able to show them the type of community that we are and that we just want to be able to dance like everybody else.”

When asked if they were excited or nervous, multiple gave a smile and shook their heads yes.

They will be able to remain in France for approximately a week, giving them the opportunity to see some of the sights, which they said would be fun.

Stewart said they had gone to Paris in 2019 and that “they absolutely loved the Carolina Shag. Anywhere we go, we’re always really embraced, they love the fast footwork.”

During the competitions, Joey Sogluizzo said when they compete as a team, they perform three separate songs and “typically when you learn a routine, you do it for a whole season.” The three songs they will be performing, which will be “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” followed by “Boat Dock” and the last one, “Tutti Frutti.”

This is the Junior Shag Dance Team’s 12th season.

Of the team members, the one dancing the longest is Walters, who has been dancing for 12 years.

For her, what she likes about shag dancing is definitely the community, as she said it’s the backbone of it.

“There’s always support. People show up for each other. It’s family, and you can just tell all the compassion that everybody has and the love that we all share, not just for the dance, but with each other,” she said.

Parker Caldwell, who has been dancing for four years, said what drew him to it is “the level of expression that you can see from different dancers. Nobody here dances the same, and we’re put in this situation where we kind of have to. But then you will go out to public events and you will see everyone has a little bit of a different style so there’s no real wrong way to dance and it’s kind of very inclusive, I would say for the community.”

Abrielle and William Benoit are the newest members of the group, William said, as this is their first year competing on a team.

What got them started, he said, was the offer of free dance lessons from their neighbors, which their mom said they were going to take. After they got started, they began to love to dance, he said.

“I’ve always loved to perform,” said William Beniot, “and this is another stage on which I get to work with my sibling and other people, make new friends and dance and do something exciting.”

Matthews said it was his grandmother, Beverly Hobgood, a dancer herself and board member of FASA, the Fayetteville Area Shag Association, who taught him how to dance. He was around seven when she asked if he wanted to attend one of their monthly parties and he said ‘sure.’

He didn’t like dancing at first but then she started to teach him, first dancing with a doorknob, then dancing with her and then he attended a Junior Cyclone dance event, he said, and went for three years.

It was there he met the Stewarts who are his dance coaches, and he then began attending Junior SOS, and, he said, “fell more in love with the dance and now I’m just grateful that I ever started.”

Shag dancing is fun for the coaches as well as they shared what it means to them.

For Stewart, she said it was the friendships, telling that her shag dance friends are like family.

“I know I could pick up the phone and call any one of these three,” as she pointed to Henley and the Sogluizzos, “and they would be right there for me in a split moment. It’s just hard to find that connection anywhere else other than shag friends. They are such a blessing.”

Jennifer Sogluizzo agreed as she said, she had danced since she was 10 and her shag dance friends are “like extended family and have been for as long as I can remember.”  

Henley was a member of the team for about four or five years, along with her brother, until she aged out but remained to help the kids and added that these are her friends.

Of the team staff, Stewart said the Sogluizzos have danced the longest, are the Senior Pro Champions and have the most team experience.

Joey Sogluizzo said the National Shag Dance Team Championships are held every year at Myrtle Beach.

He said the championships “sort of sponsored a team and that’s where we kind of got our team” and they did that for several years. They stopped for a while and then organized some teams on their own and choreographed for a few years and stopped with children and started again when their son Joel began dancing, he said. 

The couple began competing themselves and helping with other teams, he added.

Jennifer Sogluizzo said they love the kids on the team, and enjoy spending time with them.

“We have such a great group of kids that not only have talent, but they have manners and respect and carry themselves when we go different places in such a way that the community notices. Very respectful, very appreciative of the opportunity that they have.” 

Stewart echoed that sentiment as she said that when they go places, the people “love how our kids are so respectful and nice, so it’s just great to go places and represent our state dance.”