By Janice Sorensen
The BYU backup ballroom team recently traveled to Nauvoo to perform and inspire audience members through their dance.
The tour, which lasted from June 19 to July 2, 2006, included nightly performances in the auditorium at the Joseph Smith Academy as well as several day shows.
Though the auditorium seated about 600 audience members, it did not always accommodate all the hopeful attendees. The team often added a second show directly after a night”s performance because of high demand, said Jessica Chunn, a tour member and recent BYU graduate.
“We had packed houses almost every night,” Chunn said. “They had to turn people away.”
The performance incorporated a number of different dances in its repertoire, including Latin, standard ballroom, mambo, waltz and swing. The team of 30 dancers performed their variety showcase for about one hour each night during the trip.
Along with these shows, the team also performed during the day at other locations in and around Nauvoo. The dancers had day shows in nearby towns such as Keokuk, Fort Madison and Quincy with local couple missionaries as their guides.
One of the purposes of the tour was to share the gospel with audiences through dance and the personal examples of the group members.
“It was a lot of fun to share our love of dance and the gospel with the people,” Chunn said.
The dancers wore name tags indicating their affiliation with the BYU Ballroom Dance Company when they were not performing and received a lot of attention from the community, said John Parkes, a team member and junior majoring in business management.
“People often would come to a show because of an interest in the church,” Parkes said.
Parkes noted that on one occasion, a woman saw a day show and commented to the director she could see in the performers” faces they were good people. The woman later brought eight of her friends to an evening performance.
“The goal is to share the light that we have that we receive from the gospel,” said Brigette Karlsven, a senior majoring in dance. “We show the energy and the spirit with our dance.”
Karlsven said while she did not have any experiences sharing the gospel with community members on the tour, the performances did help to break the ice for others.
“Members of the church in the community had friends ask about the church because they saw the show,” she said.
