If you only attend one event in Concord this year that features great food and drinks, live music and a whole night of competitive and fun dancing, make sure that one event is NHTI’s Winter Fling this Saturday.
The Winter Fling is a big fundraising event to benefit the college, and it’s always wildly popular. The event started in 2011, and since then has raised $300,000 for the school’s President’s Fund for Excellence, which NHTI President Susan Dunton uses to underwrite student scholarships and helps pay for the college’s highest-priority needs. It also has the impressive distinction of having sold out every single year of its existence now.
Don’t worry, though – there are still some tickets available for this year’s event, but we’ll get to that a little later.
The Winter Fling will include a full night of dining and entertainment, starting with “Concord by the Bite” at 5:30 p.m., featuring more than a dozen local restaurants offering tapas-style snacks, as well as a free wine and beer tasting. A new feature this year will be beer samples made by students in the school’s brewing class.
Then, at 7 p.m., it will be time for the main event: Dancing With the Concord Stars.
If you’ve seen the TV show, this is just like that, only way better. This competition pits 10 Concord duos against each other to determine who has the best moves in the city. There are some awards up for grabs, including the coveted People’s Choice award, but it’s mostly pride and honor at stake here.
The duos – we’re avoiding the word “couples” since almost all of the male-female pairs are not, in fact, a couple in the romantic sense – have been practicing their moves for months at either Let’s Dance Studio, NV Dance Productions or Concord Dance Academy. They each got 10 free dance lessons, all courtesy of the dance studios and instructors, and they’ll get the chance to show a crowd of about 500 the fruits of their labor.
During the dance competition, a buffet and cash bar will be provided by Alan’s of Boscawen.
Once the competition has finished, a team of student judges will decide the winners of various awards such as the prestigious Best Overall. There will also be a fan vote for the People’s Choice award. Each attendee will be given one paper ballot upon check-in that they can use to vote for their favorite dance pairing. It will also be possible to buy extra ballots once inside if you really want to sway the vote – after all, all the money goes toward giving students scholarships and addressing pressing needs at the college.
After the winners are announced, the competition portion of the night is over, but the dancing isn’t. Once the contest is officially done, the floor will open up for general dancing for everyone, not just the contestants. Live music will be provided by Club Soda Band, who will also play before everything gets going.
This year’s contestants for Dancing With the Concord Stars are: Jenna Borbidge, Vibrant Health Chiropractic, and Kevin Boyarsky, N.H. Print and Mail; Candace Fitzgerald, Concord Monitor/Insider, and Josh Craggy, Lucky’s Barbershop; Dawn Champagne, Lincoln Financial Group, and Paul Gaffney, Title Boxing Club; Joanne Randall, Sprout for Business, and Dan Randall, Concord Fire Department; Michelle Olivier, Merrimack County Savings Bank, and Tom Devaney, NHTI; Kate Fleming, Intown Concord, and Aaron Jones, Rattlebox Studios; Kathi Russ, American Cancer Society, and Jody Blumberg, Payson Center for Cancer Care; Chris Mamos Ryerson, Annuity East, and Andrew Pinard, Hatbox Theatre; Suzi Pegg, City of Concord, and Keith Nyhan, City of Concord; and Heather Wilding, Connection, and Keith Wilding, NHTI.
Since these pairs have been practicing for the past few months, we got a chance to drop in to some rehearsal sessions a couple weeks ago to see how things were going.
In the case of Heather and Keith Wilding, a married couple, the compatibility and chemistry was immediately apparent. Even if we had gone to Let’s Dance not knowing they were married, we would have guessed there was some prior connection with these two based on the way they danced together.
The couple admitted that they had taken some dance lessons before, but not since their wedding some 20 years ago. And while they danced a similar type of dance at their wedding – a waltz – this one, a Viennese Waltz, has quite a few differences.
“There’s a bit of acting in there, too, not just dancing,” Heather Wilding said. Their dance is sort of a drama, and without giving too much away, there’s definitely a cool twist at the end of their performance.
We also got the chance to check on our colleague Candace Fitzgerald of the Insider/Monitor ad department, who is dancing with Lucky’s Barbershop owner Josh Craggy. They, too, practiced at Let’s Dance Studio.
Craggy showed up on the first day with some Ramones songs to suggest, and one of these tracks ultimately won out (we won’t tell you which one so as not to spoil the surprise). Craggy and Fitzgerald are not a couple (as far as we know), but they had the moves down pat when we saw them.
“We’re not too bad, are we?” Fitzgerald asked with confidence after the first run-through of their rehearsal.
We didn’t get to see Kathi Russ of the American Cancer Society and Jody Blumberg of the Payson Center for Cancer Care practice, but Russ reported that things have been going smoothly – for the most part.
“We’re having a lot of laughs along the way,” Russ said. She admitted that she may have stomped his toe a few times, and he may have almost accidentally knocked her in the face once or twice, but they’re not afraid of anything heading into the big show.
And Kate Fleming of Intown Concord and Aaron “Mr. Aaron” Jones of Rattlebox Studio also reported on productive and fun practice sessions.
“We’re at the point now where we’re polishing up, working on smiling, not looking at the mirror,” Fleming said. “It’s been a really fun experience. It’s been fun to work with Aaron – we’re good friends.”
And that’s what this is all about, really. Sure, it’s a competition, but it’s just about having a good time and contributing to a good cause.
The Winter Fling is being presented by Merrimack County Savings Bank, which is underwriting the entire event.
Tickets are still available for $85 apiece or $595 for a table of eight. To order, call Lee Ann Lewis at 271-6484, ext. 4239.
