Rose Lindly, a rising Aledo High School senior, began her first year of competitive dance this year, unaware that she would win the national-level competition for her solo.
Lindly has been dancing since she was younger. She was a member of the Aledo Middle School Dance Team and spent two years on the AHS Dance Team before taking time off due to health issues.
Lindly was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease, in November of her Sophomore year, and because of the pain, she had to take a step back from dance, to spend time healing and trying new ways to treat her condition. She is now on successful medication and starting to go into remission.
Lindly’s dance teacher and choreographer Kimberly Gaudette encouraged her to join the competition team at Uplift Dance Education in Aledo.
Even with a late start to creating her solo, Lindly worked hard to prepare for the season.
She has always been passionate about dance and thanks the support of her studio for being able to push through and learn her solo for this season's competitions beginning in February. “Dance is what I consider my therapy and something that I can do even when I'm going through a lot of struggles,” said Lindly. “I definitely think it was a lot harder than if I wouldn't have had Crohn's…But I'm really thankful to just have such a great community at my studio that helped me go through that and worked well with me.”
At the regional competition in March, Precision Arts Challenge, Lindly competed with her solo, a jazz dance to “Telephone” by Lady Gaga. For her strong performance, she got the PAC Attack Call Back, which provided her a chance to improv in front of the judges, and she received a scholarship to the nationals-level competition in Chicago, PAC Attack Challenge. Lindly was the only person from her studio who competed at nationals this year.
Going into nationals, Lindly felt confident after hours of perfecting her routine alongside Gaudette, she said.
Lindly and her mother, Dara, set off to Chicago on June 21 for the competition, and on June 23, all of her hard work came to fruition. Lindly won first place for her solo in the senior advanced category, got the PAC Attack Call Back for a second time, and platinum adjudication, “a highly prestigious score denoting a nearly flawless performance,” according to the Precision Arts website.
“I remember finding out when I got first place, they were calling all the numbers for the solos, and I was like, ‘Well, they haven't called mine yet.’ And I started getting really nervous,” said Lindly. Then, “I was like, ‘Wait, they said the top two. I'm the only one left for this.’ And then they said, ‘and the number one goes to," and my number… I was very, very excited.”
“It was really just awesome standing there and being like, ‘Wow, I worked really hard for this, and I got what I worked for,’” said Lindly.
Lindly is now going into her senior season with the competition team and is really excited to see what the season holds, she said.
She is an assistant dance teacher at her studio now, and that influence has caused her to think about “teaching younger kids dance when older…it's a full circle moment knowing that when I was younger, the foundations I had are what got me here, and I get to be the foundation for other students right now,” she said.
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