Laurie Charron - Dance Coach
Laurie Charron has been coaching the Starlites Dance program at the Port Huron Physical Arts Center since 1999, where she's coached thousands of girls and earned many awards from competitions across the country. This past fall, she took on her latest challenge of starting a dance team at SC4.
"I had known [SC4 Chief Operating Officer/Executive Vice President] Kirk Kramer for a long time and sat on a couple of boards with him, and he was talking to my husband about wanting some entertainment during the girls' basketball games," Charron said.
Kramer was originally going to bring in some of Charron's current Starlite dancers, so the girls demonstrated a couple of their routines.
"After we showed him, I joked and said, 'Why don't you guys have a team down there?'" she said, referring to having an SC4 dance team. "It was just one of those off the cuff remarks but you could tell the wheels started turning."
So just before Christmas, Charron held auditions and started going over some choreography for the new Skippers Dance Team to perform. After performing during basketball games, they stepped onto a bigger stage.
"I thought we were ready and we went to Chicago, where we placed second," Charron said. "Then they got the fever because they really enjoyed it. Four of the eight girls were my past dancers so they had experience so that helped them not be so nervous, and the new ones just loved it."
Their competition in Chicago was the first and only of the season, as Covid-19 ended the season early. This second-place finish at the Chicago event, however, earned the team enough points to earn a bid the United States AllStar Federation Dance Worlds.
The competition would've been in April, but since it was canceled, the USASF adopted a new point-system that ranked the teams based on the competitions they already had. The Skippers ended up finishing in a five-way tie for sixth place, as ties weren't broken.
Charron said she was so proud of the girls' first season and is looking forward to next year with plans to expand and implement new routines.
"We learned two hip hop routines, which is a good genre because it's less technical than jazz or lyrical, but we're going to add those in in the future," she said. "This year when I do my auditions, I'll have them audition for separate teams—hip hop, pom, and jazz—and depending on how smoothly that goes, I'll add in a contemporary lyrical routine."
Although she grew up as a cheerleader, Charron said she didn't really get involved in dance until her daughters started dancing.
"I've always loved cheerleading and anything that had to do with sports and athletes, and I like the creativity of cheerleading," she said. "When my daughter started doing dance classes and things like that, I was so interested in it. She'd do a recital a couple of times, and I remember thinking, 'I wish she could do this more.'"
And after not finding a year-round dance program in the area, Charron decided to start one herself. She bought the Port Huron Physical Arts Center and it all started from there. Her Starlite teams have since competed across the country and earned awards at every level—from state to international.
"The biggest competitions we've been to, which you have to be invited to go to, is Dance Worlds International Dance Championship," she said. "It's only for seniors and older and we've been awarded those bids every year since 2011."
Despite all of her successes and awards, however, Charron sees dancing as so much more. She uses it as an opportunity to encourage and help young women grow to be leaders.
"I want them to learn to be leaders, not followers," she said. "If I can do anything for them, it's to teach them to be leaders, not followers, and to be more confident."
