This year, a McMinnville medical center helped raise breast cancer awareness by submitting videos to the Pink Glove Dance Competition.

More than 135 groups submitted videos to the competition. For the competitions, videos must include all participants wearing pink exam gloves and dancing to one of seven songs provided by Medline.

The original Pink Glove Dance video was filmed at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Portland, Ore., two years ago.

Since then, Medline has produced a sequel video and this competition.

Steve Singleton, a surgical materials coordinator at Willamette Valley Medical Center, directed the videos.

The staff asked him to film and produce the video since he had prior experience. Singleton said that the staff was inspired, which is why they wanted to make this video.

“Our inspiration was our community,” Singleton said. “One of the leads in administration asked me to do this. We saw the original and wanted to get away from just hospital scenes and tried to look at local places.”

The group filmed in familiar settings around McMinnville.

They filmed at 3rd Street, local vineyards, Roth’s, the police station, the fire station and many other local destinations.

“[People were] surprisingly supportive,” Singleton said. “The cops don’t normally like their pictures taken, and a woman in the office told us they might not want to participate. So we thought we might get some of the office workers to do it, but the policemen and women were happy to participate. We went to macho places, like the auto shop.[They were] reluctant but were glad they did it. Some were hard to get to stop dancing.”

Along with filming at local places, the group was successful in getting more than just the hospital staff involved and featured in the video.

The McMinnville dance team came to dance in the video, as well as the Pre-Nursing Club at Linfield College.

“One of the girls on the dance team is a cancer survivor, and it’s great that these young people get involved,” Singleton said.

The voting process continues until Oct. 21.

With more than three hours of footage, the group produced three videos to submit, and though the Oregon group is placed in the middle, it says that it is not giving up.

“We have about 16,000 votes, but Oregon makes those come backs,” Singleton said.

The top three videos will win sponsored donations to its choice of charity that supports breast cancer research.

“Even if we don’t get in the top three and win money, it was good that the community got together and did this,” Singleton said.

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Kaylyn Peterson/Sports editor
Kaylyn Peterson can be reached at [email protected].