Breast-cancer survivors dance for a good cause - Bertram Rantin on Astini News

See video at end of this story

It was 40 seconds for the ages Tuesday evening as several hundred Lexington Medical Center employees donned pink gloves and danced a dance of celebration for breast-cancer survivors.

The sounds of Katy Perry's "Fireworks" echoing from the rear of the hospital campus provided the backdrop for a music video the hospital is producing as part of a national competition.

Lexington Medical doctors, nurses, administrators and other support staff — including several breast-cancer survivors — gathered on the hospital grounds Tuesday to tape the final 40 seconds of the video that will be submitted to the national Medline "Pink Glove Dance" video contest. The nationwide event encourages breast-cancer awareness and prevention, and Lexington Medical Center is among nationwide hospitals taking part in the competition. The winning group will be awarded $10,000 to go to the breast-cancer charity of its choice.

"We trying to highlight breast cancer and breast-cancer survivors," Lexington Medical Center's director of marketing, Mark Shelley, said. "It's telling a story and highlighting our employees who are breast-cancer survivors."

Shelley is co-directing the three-minute, 50-second video with Stephen Wessinger, the hospital's multimedia coordinator. The video highlights hospital employees in various departments who have survived breast cancer and concludes with a 40-second dance segment that was rehearsed and taped Tuesday.

"The finale was tonight," Shelley said of the taping that will continue Thursday and Friday at the hospital.

And while not offering up every detail of the finished product, Shelley said the video will include various freeze frames of hospital employees who have survived the disease. He said it's largely because of such experiences that the hospital has better related to others facing the same challenges.

"A (cancer) patient may be feeling alone. But many times someone they are interacting with at the hospital has sat in their seat," Shelley said. "They've worn their shoes."

Kelly Jeffcoat, a breast-cancer nurse navigator and breast-cancer survivor, knows that role.

Six weeks after assuming her current job years ago, Jeffcoat learned she had breast cancer, and while the news was daunting, she said her own treatments had boosted her credibility with patients.

"When I met those first few ladies, there was no guessing," she said.

And as she took her place in the dance line Tuesday, it was with hopes of helping other survivors reflect on all there is to celebrate.

"Unfortunately, there are those who do not survive," she said. "But there are 2.3 million breast-cancer survivors alive today. So we are doing something right. To be able to celebrate life, it's just a reminder of where you've been and where you are."

Hospital employees spent more than two hours Tuesday evening rehearsing and taping the video's end segment, choreographed by Stacey Ashley of Gold's Gym.

Shelley said the hospital choose "Fireworks," one of six songs it could select from, because of its message to the downtrodden and its encouragement to those individuals to let their lights shine.

The videos will be judged on creativity, originality, production value and audience appeal.

Lexington Medical Center's video will be posted on www.pinkglovedance.com Oct. 3. Medline Industries will then place selected videos on a national web site to be voted on. The winning hospital will be announced at the end of October along with its designated charity.

The original Pink Glove Dance video premiered in 2009 in Portland, Ore., with hospital workers wearing pink gloves and dancing in support of breast-cancer awareness. Medline Industries, a company that manufactures pink gloves, filmed the first video, which received more than 13 million YouTube views and spawned hundreds of pink-glove dance videos across the country.

"This would be our first music video," Shelley said of himself and Wessinger. "But I don't think we'll be looking for a new job after this is over."

Video by Bertram Rantin