High school senior wins top honors at dance competitions

Posted: 7:05 am, April 29, 2015 by Reporter Heather Young

Allie Giroux, center, dances with Artistry in Motion in 2012.

Paso Robles High School senior Allie Giroux has been winning top awards in dance competitions around the country this year.

“She’s such a role model for girls,” Giroux’s mother, Mara, said. “It’s focused her away from all the things girls are enticed to do. … She’s super humble. She won’t even tell her friends when she wins big awards.”

Allie Giroux

Giroux’s high school dance teacher and cheer coach Jennifer Bedrosian agreed with Giroux being a role model. At the high school, Giroux is one of three captains of the cheer team, and is a member of the school’s dance company. She helps choreograph dances for both the cheer team and the dance company. Her teacher said she could see Giroux being a choreographer or dance teacher after her physical dance career.

“She just brings a good energy into the classroom,” Bedrosian said. “She really does inspire. … She knows how to push a student but not too far. … I’m totally going to miss her next year.”

Although Giroux won a full-ride scholarship to Joffrey Ballet School in New York City, but she decided to not take it because she would have had to spend her last two years of high school on the East Coast and would be focusing on ballet. Giroux loves all different styles of dance and her mom said that she’s considered a commercial dancer because she’s able to go from a beautiful ballerina to a jazz dancer to hip hop.

“My favorite is hip hop. I personally think hip hop is one of my stronger elements in dance,” Giroux said. “I feel a stronger connection to hip hop than any other dance style.”

At many of the dance competitions she’s competed in this year, she’s won scholarships for either summer intensives or for a whole year of attending that convention. She said she will like attend several intensives this summer and likely a national convention.

At the end of the summer, Giroux plans to move to Los Angeles with a friend. “College is not in my view,” she said. “I’m hoping to get an agent. I have a talent agency that wants to sign me. My dream would be to tour with an artist like Beyoncé or Rhianna or be in music videos or in a movie like ‘Step Up,” something in that realm.”

On a regular week, Giroux dances an average of 20 hours a week outside of school time, though she said that her time training increases when she’s preparing for a competition.She trains at both Artistry in Motion in Paso Robles and Street Heat in San Luis Obispo. In May, she has two competitions and two shows, one for each dance studio.

“I am truly grateful and blessed,” Giroux said. “It really is amazing to go to these. I don’t go into these things thinking I’m going to win. I am really grateful for everything that has happened this year.”

2015 competitions that Giroux has received an award at: