By Susie A. Wolfe
Pelahatchie Elementary School (PES) nurse Trish Drake and her professional dance partner, Mike Spencer, were named 2023 Crown Showcase World Champions January 7 in Phoenix, Arizona. She has been the school nurse at PES for 22 years.
Dancing has been a hobby for Drake since she began dancing around 2009 as an amateur. In 2017, she started dancing at the professional level with her long-time partner, Mike.
In 2019, they won a World Title in our age division at the United Country Western Dancers Association World Championship. That was in a Classic Division where they danced eight different traditional Country dances.
“It's not very often that someone holds a title in Classic and Showcase, which is a division that allows lifts and tricks along with a special Solo, but that is what we decided we wanted to do,” said Drake. “We set that as our goal for the 2023 World Championships.”
“The Showcase Division includes a Waltz and a Two-Step. The association selects the music and we have to choreograph to those preselected songs. The Showcase Division also includes a Solo number that we are allowed to select the music for and we do all of the choreography. The Solo has to include more than one type of dance, has to be entertaining and tell a story, while including actual technical dancing, with a time limit.”
“We aren't exactly "young," so Showcase is certainly a challenge,” she said. “After a year-long journey of training, lots of bruises and sore muscles, it all paid off for us in Phoenix last week (January _)! We are the 2023 Crown Showcase World Champions!”
While competing at the professional level, Drake and Spencer also teach private and group lessons in the Jackson, Hattiesburg and Biloxi areas. Between the two of them, they have several students that have become National Champions and others that just prefer to social dance.
Contact Drake at [email protected] if wanting to learn to dance.
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