It’s been three months since I performed in Dancing with the Stars, Shasta County Style at the Cascade Theatre, I was one of 12 dancers, including the couple you see here, Kurt Starman, Redding city manager, and Sarah Leavers, Starman’s professional dancer partner.
My dancing shoes have retired to the back of my closet. My waltz and disco dresses hang limply on hangers. What a surreal time that was, right up until the night before, when I had stage fright and regretted saying yes. What was I thinking? I’m a writer, not a dancer.
Even so, I followed through, thanks to the guidance of my professional dance partner, Jake Carver. Likewise, the other community “stars” and their respective professional dance partners took to the stage: Kurt Starman, Sarah Leavers, Jake Carver and I were joined by Tracy Edwards, Redding Rancheria CEO, and her partner Matt Armstrong; Don Burton, Results Radio manager, and his partner, Julie Correia; Les Baugh, Shasta County Supervisor, and his partner Kathy Babcock; and Chita Johnson, KRCR weather reporter, and her partner, Logan Grimes.
I bring up this up because we’ve finally extracted the 12 dances (one waltz and one disco from each couple) from the nearly 2-hour-long DWTS DVD. When I say we extracted the dances, I really mean Jeff Adams of Adams Video Production. Thank you, Jeff. And thank you Shasta Women’s Refuge, and Shasta Family YMCA for hosting such a great event that benefitted such worthy causes.
I thought with all the financial and political stress we face lately, 12 days of Dancing with the Stars Shasta County Style would be just the levity we need in these hand-wringing times.
I do not relish the thought of having my dances replayed here. In fact, I wince at the very thought of it. I rather liked how we showed you my disco number in July, copied from a very, very tiny home movie taken by my husband from the Cascade balcony, which produced a very pleasing – to my eye – version of me that appeared about 1/2-inch tall on my computer monitor. Loved it.
Chita Johnson gets a great deal of the credit for our 12 days of Dancing with the Stars Shasta County Style clips. While all the dancers’ names have appeared from time to time as search terms on our site since that July 12 event, one name has appeared as a recurring search term, sometimes six, seven times a day, spelled myriad ways: Chita Johnson.
We hear you. You’ll watch Chita dance. But first, today we begin with Kurt Starman and Sarah Leavers.
Enjoy.
On the bottom of the video screen there is a button immediately to the right of the speaker icon. You can click on that button to make the video full screen.
