Local dancer signs with out-of-state university team

WASILLA — Baylee Bartgis may be dancing her way to stardom, but she’s not about to forgo an academic education, or forget her faith.

Bartgis, 17, will arrive at Sonja’s Studio of Dance Saturday for something other than one of the eight dance classes she attends in a given week. In the presence of her family and her new college coach, Lynsey Payne, via FaceTime, she will sign with Baker University dance team, located in Baldwin City, Kansas, securing her a scholarship package to attend the Christian school.

“We were doing research on the Internet of schools that offer scholarships and we looked at places in Utah, Nebraska, and when we found this one we really liked it,” Bartgis said of the selection process.

After talking to the coach with her mother, she said, it sounded like there were “a lot of benefits,” including the friendliness of her future teammates.

“I have some girls from the team already texting me telling me they're super excited,” Bartgis said.

Two years prior starting dance, Bartgis was a gymnast at Denali Gymnastics in Wasilla. When she was 13 years old, she became an unofficial coach for young, low-level gymnasts, and by age 14 she was hired by the company to coach as an official staff member.

Shortly after a back injury she sustained in gymnastics, dance began to look even more appealing, Bartgis said.

“It hurts less,” she said, laughing.

So Bartgis began dancing “full-time” at Sonja’s, coaching on the side. Soon she was enrolled in classes of every genre, taking up en pointe, lyrical ballet, jazz, funk, hip-hop and modern, her mother, Lisa, said, performing and competing with the jazz dancers of Alaska Pride Drill Team and pre-professional ballet artists in Enliven Dance Company at the studio. In 2012, she achieved the part of Clara in Anchorage Classical Ballet Academy’s production of “The Nutcracker” and will perform in the same show this year as a dancer and soloist at the new Valley Performing Arts starting Dec. 13.

“My teachers at the studio know I can tumble and do tricks because I love gymnastics,” she said, on getting the part this year. “They’ve seen me dance and they’ve seen me grow so they wanted me to do the Arabian solo.”

But how does she do it all?

“By the grace of God,” she said.

Being homeschooled her entire life helps too, though, she said.

“I mainly did it for gymnastics in the beginning, to have more time for dance and other things,” she said.

She still has to get up early though, she said, in order to finish her school work before going to the gym, then going to dance, then going to help the girls at Denali Gymnastics.

“I’m a busy girl,” she said.

Her most memorable dance experience so far, however, came from being at a week-long, intensive dance camp and program in Irvine, California with In Studio Dance company this summer. During the week, Bartgis and the other dancers worked with world-renowned choreographers and dancers, her mother said, and Baylee said that working with Stephen “tWitch” Boss and his wife — from the TV show, “So You Think You Can Dance” — was particularly memorable.

But Baylee wasn’t the only one impressed. At the end of the week, she said, the company offered her a scholarship to attend the camp again next year.

Will she accept it?

“Yes ma’am, for sure,” she said.

Baylee still has a plan to venture into the world outside of dance, however. In college, she intends to pursue a degree in elementary education, she said.

“Since I have been coaching gymnastics and working with kids of that age group, I don’t know, I love working with kids,” she said. “I love to be able to see kids meet their goals and have an impact on their lives. I feel like I can really make a difference.”

With that positive, confident attitude, she just might. Bartgis isn’t nervous about dancing at the collegiate level, nor performing well in her studies, she said, but leaving her mother, father, brother and sister behind might be tough, she said.

“We’re all very close to each other, (so) I think that’s going to be the hardest part,” she said.

As reported by Michelle Lewis on HerCampus.com, Baker University’s dance team was ranked sixth in the top 11 college dance teams in the nation last year, and the team has won the NAIA/NDA national championship twice. This year, the school ranked among Kansas universities in the Midwest Universities Regional category in the 2015 edition of the U.S. News and World Report’s list of Best Colleges, as reported in a Sept. 10 press release. Baker was also recognized as a “College of Distinction” and a “hidden gem” in an Aug. 13 release.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.