The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

(Photos by Denis Jeong. Click any picture to begin viewing slideshow.)

Blonde, brunette, redhead. Varying degrees of fake tan and thousand-watt grins. These girls come from far and wide, (I'd imagine), to compete to be the next batch of Minnesota Timberwolves Dancers. They conjure images of Flashdance and CMT's Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team, bejeweled in sequined, midriff shirts, and full hair and makeup.

If the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are the iconic group who popularized the beautiful dance troupe as the principal ingredient for game-side cheering, the trend has definitely become the norm. For the past two nights, in a chlorine-smelling basement room in the Target Center, dancers have competed for their game-side spot.

The girls all look so nervous, and excited, and hopeful--stretching, smiling, flipping hair, and pointing toes. Editor Jill Yablonski and I sit in a dusty corner taking in the sweat and leg kicks. The judges, in their Hollywood denim and blazers, cute little dresses and stilettos, make furious pen scribbles while watching girl number 100-whatever fumble her footwork--some other girl mouth along to the song--some other girl scowl, and bite her lip through a set of shaky-shakes.

It is fun to be so close to a bunch of professional dancers. I romanticize dancers. Their flexibility, their hot little bods. It's in part because I suck at dancing, and I am not flexible in any way. I can't even hold my own in a step-class at the Y. But it's also got to do with Flashdance and other movies like it. I really dig the dance-movie genre.

I wonder, is there a eighteen year-old, blue-collar Alex Owens here tonight? An exotic dancer by night, welder at a steel mill by day, who lives in a warehouse with her pit bull, Grunt?

Maybe not, but a girl can dream, can't she?