The Milwaukee Dancing Grannies are trading their usual parade routes for baseball's biggest stage. About 20 members of the Wisconsin dance group, known for its community spirit, signed up to perform at this year's World Series pregame show alongside hundreds of other performers, with rehearsals set to begin Tuesday ahead of Game 1 on Friday, October 23.
BD Entertainment, the company organizing the pregame show, selected the Dancing Grannies to take part, according to WISN. The production will include 350 performers total, with another 150 on standby, the outlet reports. Among those signed up is Jan Kwiatowski, one of roughly 20 Grannies who put their names in for the performance.
Kwiatowski said she decided to try out after another Granny suggested the gig looked fun, per the station's report. Her connection to the moment runs deeper than a single tryout, though — she marched in the Waukesha Christmas Parade in 2021, the same parade where a man drove into the crowd, killing six people, including three members of the Dancing Grannies and a volunteer.
A Tragedy the Group Has Carried for Years
The four people killed that day were Virginia “Ginny” Sorenson, LeAnna Owen, William Hospel and Tamara Durand. At least 62 people were injured in the attack.
Kwiatowski told the station she believes Bob Uecker and the four deceased Grannies brought the Brewers and their World Series opponent together. She also said the Brewers and the Grannies are both tough and resilient.
Rebuilding From Eight Surviving Members
The scale of what the group has rebuilt from is striking. In the attack's immediate aftermath, the Dancing Grannies were down to roughly eight surviving members, according to NPR. The surviving members brought on 22 new grandmothers, dubbed “Grannies in Training,” to help the group carry on, NPR reported at the time.
The group returned to public performance on March 12, 2022, marching in the Milwaukee St. Patrick's Day parade in a tribute to the four members lost in Waukesha, per NPR's reporting. Founded in 1984 as a jazz exercise group, the Dancing Grannies have since grown into a nonprofit with more than 40 members, according to the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies' own website, which describes the organization as a 501(c)(3) whose members volunteer without salaries.
That nonprofit now performs in more than 30 parades a year, plus community events, senior centers, women's clubs and fundraisers across southeastern Wisconsin and beyond, the group's site states. Earlier this year, the Grannies represented Wisconsin in two Independence Day parades, a trip that followed more than a year of preparation including weekly practices and coordination with federal security agencies, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
Building a 350-Person Show
Assembling a production this large is nothing new for BD Entertainment. For last year's World Series show, the company found 400 people in the Greater Toronto Area to perform, Nadler told the station. That production featured performers in robes colored to form the American flag, which transitioned into the Canadian flag during the national anthem.
The scale tracks with other recent World Series productions. More than 40 alumni of the Burlington Teen Tour Band took part in a Game 1 pregame show at Toronto's Rogers Centre, a performance that needed 400 performers and featured a full cast of 500 Canadians and Americans, including Pharrell Williams and the 100-person Voices of Fire choir, according to the Oakville News. That same band had previously performed at the World Series in both 1992 and 1993, the outlet noted.
For the Dancing Grannies, next week's rehearsals mark another step in a story that has stretched from a neighborhood jazz exercise class to a national stage, carrying the memory of four members with them every step of the way.
