Most people who are really, really good at things have been practicing since they were little.
Whether it’s dance, music, science, or whatever skill or interest. Practice, as they say, makes perfect.
And if their performance at the 2019 National Shag Dance Championship (NSDC) was any indication, middle schoolers Gracie Pandure and Tucker Brown are well on their way to perfection.
The National Shag Dance Competition was started in Myrtle Beach in 1984 and is the longest continuously running Shag dance contest in the United States, according to their website.
Lots of NSDC winners have gone on to perform at prestigious events and on TV shows like Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, PGA Annual Banquets, NBA Games, Beach Music Awards, and Harvard University.
The NSDC is held over two weekends each year with the preliminaries held at the end of January and the finals held in early March.
“If you enjoy watching dance shows on TV, then you should attend the NSDC and experience the excitement of a first-class dance competition in person,” their websites states.
Grace of Myrtle Beach, NC and Tucker of Angier, NC were the winners of the NSDC’s 2019 Junior I Division.
The three-night event featured more than 50 contestants in six different divisions: Junior I, Junior II, Non-Pro, Pro, Senior, and Masters.
And Grace, who was an 8th grader at North Myrtle Beach Middle School at the time, and Tucker, who was a 7th grader at Lafayette Elementary School, made a big splash out of all of those contestants.
The two came out adorably dressed – Grace in a red jumpsuit and Tucker in matching red pants and a white shirt.
The pair performed their Shag routine to the song “Queen of the 88s” by Kelley Hunt.
The Shag is a dance that was created on the beaches of South Carolina, according to Southern Living.
To do the Shag, you’ll take on the basic steps of a “one-and-two, three-and-four, five-six” pattern.
“To put it very simply, it’s a lot of stepping forward and backward in those counts, switching your weight between your right and left side throughout. Another key idea for learning the Shag is that it should generally feel and look as if the partners are mirroring each other’s movements, completely in sync,” Southern Living writes.
Before Gracie and Tucker begin, the two look like an awkward couple at a middle school dance who are afraid to dance with and touch each other.
But that all changes as soon as the music starts.
When they start to feel the rhythm of the song, their bodies move accordingly. The crowd starts cheering wildly as the pair hit them with some real fancy footwork.
The moves were kind of subtle but they were incredibly intricate.
Then came the non-subtle moves with the spinning and twirling all over the dance floor.
They both have some fun individual moves that really made both Grace and Tucker stand out.
But toward the end, their moves are done in union creating a beautiful spectacle. The crowd went wild when their dance concluded.
And it looks like the internet did too. More than 79,800 people viewed their dance performance on YouTube.
“Wow! Impressive! Can’t believe he’s only in the 7th grade,” wrote one commenter on YouTube.
Check out their dance for yourself in the video below.
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