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WEST JORDAN — It's like a scene straight from the movie, "Bring it On". Two high school drill teams, both fierce competitors vying for state titles. Although these two teams have never met, they know all about each other now.
Shannon Mortensen, coach of the Copper Hills High School Azurettes, feels right at home on the dance floor. That's why she spends five days a week choreographing routines for girls of all ages.
"Choreographing is fun," said Mortensen. "With the talented group of girls it's even more fun."
Her work has apparently caught the eye of more than just those in Utah.
"A Minnesota team sent us a video to make us aware of what was going on," Mortensen said. "My first reaction was, 'Oh, my gosh! They're doing our routine from last year.'"
The team called the Faribault Emeralds, based in a city 1,200 miles away, had just won a championship too.
"I think you would still call it plagiarism," Mortensen said. "It's just a different art form."
She said there are differences in the Emeralds' dance and her own, but the theme, music choice and costumes are all too close to be coincidental.
"This is all our choreography with the heads and the soloists," she explained Monday, watching the routine again.
Other teams at the Minnesota competition agreed and refused to line up for the awards presentation. It was a move that disqualified them all.
The coach of the Emeralds admitted to copying the Azurettes team's concept but claimed her team used their own moves for the routine.
"If any amount of time was similar it was about 4 seconds here and there, and never consecutively," said Emeralds coach Lois Kinkle.
The Minnesota State High School League investigated the claims of dance plagiarism and cleared the Emeralds of any wrongdoing. But a video on deadspin.com that plays the two routines side by side is still drawing criticism.
Mortensen hopes the whole thing will bring awareness to something she said happens far too often.
"People (choreograph) for a living," she said. "When they're not paid for their services it hurts the industry as a whole."
