The Cougarettes recently won the Grand Prix at the 2012 New Prague Dance Festival.
Jodi Maxfield, the group’s artistic director, said the Cougarettes were able to showcase a broader spectrum of talent at the festival than at other competitions.
“We were able to compete in several genres of dance,” Maxfield said. “We took a jazz number, a couple of contemporary numbers, two of our competition pieces and a lyric spiritual number.”
Over the course of six days, the Cougarettes competed against dance teams from across the world, including South Africa, Belgium and Australia. Besides winning the Grand Prix, the dancers were chosen by popular vote to receive the Most Friendly award.
“I think the Most Friendly award is almost as big an honor as winning the whole dance festival,” Maxfield said. “It speaks volumes about the kind of women they are. They didn’t just go to compete and win trophies, they went to make connections and they were successful at both.”
Aside from performing in competition at night, the Cougarettes spent their days in workshops with some of the top university dance professors in the Czech Republic.
Earlier this year the Cougarettes were named National Dance Champions in Hip Hop, and took second place in the team dance division by one one-hundredth (.01) of a point. The championship was their tenth national title in the last 15 years.