Material Girl | Stars of the Border Dance for Cancer 2021 is back

It was a Stars of the Border Dance for Cancer fundraiser at Beer Deluxe Albury.

Essentially, it was a ballet class with booze and a hip hop lesson to boot.

It happened just as the coronavirus pandemic was getting real.

The situation was unprecedented.

The number of times "unprecedented" was being used in media conferences - or even in short sentences - was also unprecedented.

I don't care for big words; even less for pandemics.

Twelve months ago when it became clear that the Barre Night would be possibly our last night out on the town for a while, I thought I should have changed the marketing strategy.

Get out; now or never.

Last drinks. For a while. At least until mid-May.

Free sanitiser.

It must be serious if ScoMo is missing the footy.

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At the Barre Night we awkwardly bumped elbows instead of greeting each other in the usual ways.

We disinfected the barres between dance sessions.

We felt this was probably overkill but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Now this is standard practice in dance studios, everywhere.

We gave out hand sanitiser like there was no tomorrow.

Within 48 hours we had a national lockdown, an unprecedented toilet paper shortage and no hand sanitiser on the supermarket shelves!

Before we knew it the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was reading out a very long list of all the things we couldn't do under the coronavirus restrictions for at least six weeks.

Interestingly, among them were barre classes.

He didn't know how to pronounce "barre" but we got the drift.

ScoMo has since addressed this shortcoming by doing a barre class in a social media post.

I couldn't look so I'm not sure if he had a good turnout; I'm talking feet here, not the audience roll-up.

(Fun fact: In ballet, turnout is the rotation of the leg at the hips, which causes the feet and knees to turn outwards, away from the front of the body. This rotation allows for greater extension of the leg, especially when raising it to the side and rear.)

Dance classes have been on and off again, up and down again, ever since, depending on exactly where you live, warm up and stretch out in the ever-shifting border bubble.

Now, after 12 months and what seems like a lifetime of lockdowns and state border closures, Stars of the Border Dance for Cancer is finally back on its feet this week, so to speak.

The 2021 line-up remains mostly unchanged from the 2020 crew, only with four newbies joining the team.

Stars of the Border Dance for Cancer 2021 will be officially launched on Tuesday night at 2640 Restaurant and Bar in Albury.

All things being equal, the event itself will run at Albury Entertainment Centre on Friday, May 14.

It will be a night of fun, food, games, auctions and spectacular entertainment all in the name of working towards a cancer-free future.

Each year, the event sees a line-up of community Stars fundraising and dancing their way to the stage and has raised more than $600,000 to support cancer patients and their families.

With so many fundraisers lost during the global pandemic, it's more important than ever to get fundraising campaigns back on track.

Barre Night's done and dusted but there will be other events coming up.

To donate to the fundraiser or follow the progress of the event visit stars.cancercouncil.com.au/event/stars-of-border.

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