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The gym air was ripe with the twin reeks of Obsession and peroxide. Petite, fat-less Salomes in leg-warmers blew kisses at acquaintances.

When hugging, they leaned forward and touched only at the shoulders. A curly-haired bleach blonde with lavender nail polish and absurdly straight posture could bend her legs back like Gumby. In fact, she looked, smiled, and danced like a 19-year old Sammy Hagar.

It was as if every Jeep Cherokee passenger seat in suburban Vancouver had been evacuated and they all gathered under one roof for food, shelter, and relentless urban dance beats. Except for a lone bystander, the only guys present seemed to be the stubble-chinned BCTV camera crew who looked like recent BCIT grads and damned glad to be there. During warmup, the dancers flirted with the crew and kicked high enough to knock themselves out.

Sensing the bystander might be a judge, one young dancer sashayed up and demanded he unscrew the top of her Gatorade bottle. Stencilled across the chest of her t-shirt was the word VAMP. If she was even old enough for college, she was majoring in ‘Pouty and Being Coltish’ and bore a distinct resemblance to the archetypical, chiselled-makeup brunette you used to see on Duran Duran album covers--not that anybody in the gym was old enough to remember albums.

Overheard as VAMP and her friend filled out the application forms:

“What’s your dress size?” said VAMP’s friend.

“Four,” replied VAMP, “but I put down five.”

Organizing the auditions was Jocelyn Peden, the dance team choreographer who would select the 1996/97 Extreme Dance Team. Peden, 29, joined the Grizzlies for their first season after years as a dancer and choreographer. According to the Grizzlies web site, Peden has worked with Paula Abdul, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, and Janet Jackson. A perusal of the Grizzlies ‘96-’97 Media Guide revealed that Peden also ‘worked as a choreographer with a Spanish basketball team’. They may have been terrible at free throws but boy could those Spaniards dance the Macarena.

Peden’s credentials are impeccable. She started dancing at age 5. Eventually she became dance captain for the Los Angeles Lakers’ cheerleaders after starting as a ‘Laker Girl’ at 21 which, by most people’s estimation, made her a Laker Woman.

Peden quickly assembled the troops, about 75 strong; however, the Grizzlies ‘96-’97 Media Guide states these same tryouts ‘attracted more than 140 candidates’, which, oddly, is exactly the same number that tried out last year. Regardless, all were female, ostensibly between the ages of 18 and 26.

Peden quickly instructed them to shimmy across the court in a slinky yet serious manner that suggested, ‘We mean business and boy do we love basketball or whatever it’s called’. Approximately a dozen were returning from last year’s squad, leaving about five positions open to rookie hopefuls. Grizzlies Communications Assistant, Diana Schultz, told me Peden was looking for women “who pick up dance routines quickly” and “inject their personality and smile”.

Like aerobics, the ability to grin while doing sweaty exercise is also highly rewarded. After a few routines, Peden asked half the dancers to leave. Besides ‘Not Elbowing Your Neighbour In The Crotch’, the survivors had mastered key maneuvers in Peden’s routines such as:

(1) Slap Your Bum

(2) Canter Like A Horse

(3) Shout ‘Woo!’ and Swivel Your Head Around Like An Owl

It became apparent that cracking the Extreme Dance Team lineup wouldn’t be easy. It would require a proper diet, the right lycra, and, for a few dancers, a no doubt torturous switch to light beer.

This was confirmed at their training camp in early October. By this time, Peden had whittled the team down to about 17 dancers. As before, all were women. Sadly, Sammy Hagar didn’t make the cut.

Peden was signing the dancers up for a variety of promotions and fundraisers sponsored by local rock radio stations. According to the Media Guide, the dance team will ‘be active in community projects, appearing at special events, charity functions, and corporate outings’.

As such, it is important that Grizzlies representatives be outgoing, personable, fun-loving, and relatively clean. Dancers are asked to keep in the best physical shape possible and should always be open and willing to converse with everybody and answer questions, said Peden.

“Is that a hickey?” said one dancer.

“No, it’s a big huge zit,” admitted the tiniest dancer. “I went to the steam room and...”

“Stop,” commands Peden, knowing full well I was taking notes.

The Romantics’ What I Like About You blasted from the stereo, a perfect cheerleading song in its utter lack of lyrical ambition. However, as the women began to dance, it was apparent they had swiftly learned some extremely intricate moves:

(1) Hug Yourself in Primal Euphoria

(2) Toss Hair Triumphantly Back

(3) Raise Your Arms in Boastful Victory

(4) [I kid you not] Pretend to Hold Somebody Down While Beating the Absolute Living Crap Out of Them

Many of these steps mimicked common human behaviour such as hyper-exaggerated finger snapping and sudden karate kicks. But now even the youngest dancers had learned gyrations simulating the boiling sexuality of older women. For these young Lolitas, it was clearly a forced pose. There appeared to be a shocking rise in self-spanking in the new routines, as if to say, ‘We’ve been naughty girls in private so we must publicly punish ourselves in paramilitary formation’.

On November 1st, the Grizzlies were matched up against the visiting Portland Trail Blazers in the ‘96-’97 home opener. Minutes before tip off, Peden seemed nervous about the dancers’ debut and gave stiff responses to my questions.

Q: “Are they all freelancers? Is there a dance team union?”

Peden: “There is no union. They’re under contract with the Grizzlies for one season, it’s a year contract, but they’re pretty much self-employed. They are free to go and do other forms of work and dancing.”

Q: “Can I ask you about pay? Is that something you can talk about?”

Peden: “No.”

Q: “What about bonuses or perks...?”

Peden: “They get tickets to the games that they come to.”

Clad in tight white T-shirts, turquoise ‘cigarette pants’, and red loafers for their debut performance, the cheerleaders’ starting lineup was divided into two groups of six. They sat on opposite corners of the basketball court, divided by hair colour and chest size. While the slim-chested brunettes sat in the Grizzlies’ offensive end, the large-chested blondes sat in the Grizzlies’ defensive end, perhaps to distract onrushing Trail Blazers.

The dancers kneeled and swayed in unison, chanting: “D-fense” [clap, clap], “D-fense” [clap, clap]. At halftime, they got up, shimmied a bit, then kneeled again to applaud the all-male ‘Bud Lite Daredevils’ who peppered basketballs around, somersaulted off mini-tramps, and slam-dunked for the cheering crowd.

Meanwhile, the Grizzlies Communications Department handed out a steady flow of player stats: minutes played, points scored, personal fouls. Speaking of statistics, another perusal of the Media Guide revealed that arena staff had served ‘enough hot dogs to reach from General Motors Place to Squamish if laid end to end’. [Which, if they actually were laid end to end, would be a colossal waste of time, money, meat, and bother.]

It also stated the arena has sold enough beer ‘to fill all the tanks at the Vancouver Aquarium,’ which, if you think about it, is a pretty mean thing to do to the whales. Further study revealed that construction of the building used ‘approximately 4,500 tons of reinforcing steel’ and ‘this is the equivalent weight of over 100 Pontiac Firefly cars with four people inside and a full tank of gas!’ By coincidence, this is also equivalent to a much smaller number of buses carrying dozens of passengers and creating a hell of a lot less pollution.

However, what couldn’t be found anywhere were basic statistics on the dancers themselves. Even ‘Grizz’, an anonymous clown in a bear suit, has an entire web page devoted to his fictitious past. But the Dance Team? On their web page is a picture of them modelling last season’s hideous turquoise uniforms. That’s it. No background info, no career highlights.

To fill this info-chasm, I tallied an informal cheerleading stat sheet. In the second half, the cheerleaders achieved 898 coquettish smiles, 547 tosses of their lustrous manes of hair, 466 pretend drum pounding motions and/or floor pats, and 1,233 chants of ‘D-fence’ [clap, clap], ‘D-fence’ [clap, clap] while seated on a cold hardwood floor and gazing up at men playing really, really bad basketball.

At one point, the Grizzlies were losing by 33 points. One spectator yawned so hard he pulled a muscle in his stomach. When the game finally ended, the Portland Trail Blazers had scored 114 points and the Grizzlies finished with 85.

For those unfamiliar with basketball cheerleading routines, this means the Trail Blazers held the Grizzlies down and beat the absolute living crap out of them.

-30-

Published: The Vancouver Courier, January 2, 1997