Autumn Alexander is in Poland for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help represent Canada on the world stage, at an Olympic-style international dance competition this fall. She is competing at the World Ballet, Jazz and Modern Championships on Dec. 1-8 in Poland, to be held by the International Dance Organization (IDO).
The Weyburn dancer was selected as part of Team Canada Dance, and is part of three teams at this competition. IDO is a world dance and dance-sport federation with a membership of over 90 nations, representing more than 250,000 dancers from six continents.
The 19-year-old has been dancing since the age of two, and she both competes and teaches dance. Autumn saw a notice about auditions for this world-level competition, and one of her dance teachers encouraged her to try it out. In October of last year, she travelled to Surrey, B.C., to audition for Team Canada Dance for their jazz and modern dance groups.
Autumn will be competing with a large jazz group of 22 dancers, a large modern group and a smaller modern group of around seven dancers, in the adult division.
She is the only Saskatchewan-based dancer on these groups, with most of the dancers coming from the Surrey-Vancouver area, along with a number of dancers coming from Alberta, including a tap team and a hip hop team.
In a post on her Facebook page, she said, "If anyone would like to watch the IDO world competition that I’m competing in, the live stream link is below. Poland is 7 hours ahead so I will post the times in Saskatchewan time!!
Times I dance:
-Tuesday
(Small modern)
Naive Melody•#1129 (#26 in the category)• 9:20am session (SK Time)
-Wednesday
(Large modern)
Place in this• 4:55am session (will update #)
-Sunday
(Large jazz)
Now I see• 7:55am session (will update #)
*If we move on to the next round we will dance again that day. I will update this and put more specific times once I know.
