Board of education member Sheryl Weber and Kjersten McKinniss, a 2013 Mansfield Senior High graduate, talk about McKinniss’ upcoming trip to Sweden to participate in the world’s largest performing arts festival.
A young woman who perfected her ballet skills while at Mansfield Senior High School is about to dance her way across the Atlantic Ocean.
Kjersten McKinniss, a member of the H2 Dance Company at Hope College in Holland, Mich., will travel with H2 to Scotland in August to perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world.
“This trip is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It’s such a blessing,” said McKinniss, a 2013 Senior High graduate who just finished her junior year at Hope. “As a family, we’ve described Fringe as the Olympics for performing arts. The size of the spectators is about the same as the Olympics.”
The H2 Dance Company, a semi-professional repertory troupe of about 20, was selected more than a year ago to perform during the three-week world festival, known simply as The Fringe. In 2015 it featured more than 50,000 performances of 3,314 shows at 300 Edinburgh venues. The skills of thousands of performers range from dance, theater and cabaret to circus, comedy and opera.
H2 will perform a 55-minute original choreography by professor Matthew Farmer of the Hope dance faculty on each of the first four nights of the festival. The piece, “Dieser Ort” in German, translates to “this place.”
“It’s mostly a barefoot contemporary dance to taped musical accompaniment. Facial expressions and body movements are very important to the choreography. We will have audience on three sides,” said McKinniss, the daughter of Chris and Rachel McKinniss of Mansfield.
While dance is an important part of McKinniss’ life, it isn’t her career choice. She is studying to be an athletic trainer.
“My goal is to be an athletic trainer with an artistic group in a performing arts setting, perhaps a dance company or something like Circus Olay,” she said. “An athletic trainer is not like an EMT or a physical therapist. An athletic trainer is trained to see symptoms and provide on-site care that can include concussion strategies, exercises, hot/cold treatments and education to emphasize preventative care.
“Yes, I can tape an ankle, but I also recognize when there’s an underlying problem.”
A sprained ankle and two stress fractures during ballet while in high school helped to shape McKinniss’ career ambition.
“My own injuries were one of the major reasons I went into athletic training. Anatomy has always fascinated me,” she said. “I’ve stuck with it because of the skill set that is unique to me: dance, musical theater, sports, a performing arts background.”
She has attended conferences by the Michigan Athletic Training Society for athletic trainers in performing arts settings and shadowed a certified trainer during stage performances of “Sleeping Beauty” in Grand Rapids.
While McKinniss earned scholarships, including one from the Richland County Foundation, she also works four – count ‘em, four – part-time jobs to pay her own way through college. Those jobs, balanced against her academic courses and dance rehearsals, include lifeguard at Hope’s DOW Center, research assistant for a professor of kinesiology, hostess at a brewery and youth Bible study leader for Good Shepard Lutheran Church in Holland.
“It’s a challenge to work everything into my schedule, but I know when I’m going to do homework and I know when I can meet friends,” McKinniss said. “The social part is the hardest, but I need time for myself. All of my bosses are great about working with me and so is the dance department.”
Sheryl Weber, a member of the Mansfield City Schools Board of Education, knows McKinniss well. She was a social studies teacher and National Honor Society adviser during the years that her former student’s lengthy list of activities included roles as president of NHS, Key Club member, orchestra first violin, the Ashland Regional Ballet Company and the Woodland Club pool swim team.
“It does not surprise me that Kjersten has so many things going on but manages all of them well,” Weber said. “Her organizational skills were evident in high school. She had an agenda and it always went very smoothly.”
The H2 Dance Company has the summer off but will have two days of intense rehearsals just before leaving for Scotland. This month McKinniss will begin working as an athletic trainer first-responder at Hope’s summer youth camps for basketball, volleyball, lacrosse and swimming.
“I’ve been a lifeguard for six years. I have always loved the idea of providing emergency care,” she said. “I want to be where and when something happens. I know I can help. I think clearly and I think fast.”