“Do you like to dance?”
In fall 1986, Paula Escobar Berger, ’90, and Michele Breslow Rogowsky, ’90, stood in the Diag handing out flyers, inviting passing students to try out for the brand new Michigan Dance Team Club — born of the discovery that the University of Michigan was the only Big Ten school without a dance team.
Thirty-two dancers joined the inaugural team, which officially became a recognized student organization in 1987. With no available gymnasium space, the team practiced on the marble floors of the Michigan Union, steadily working to gain support from the athletic department and reach their ultimate goal of performing at sporting events.
“We were told ‘no’ several times by the athletic director and department heads but we refused to give up,” Escobar Berger recalls. Along the way, they danced at U-M women’s basketball games, tailgate parties hosted by an Ann Arbor radio station, and even at the 1989 NBA Finals.
Persistence paid off and on Dec. 6, 1989, the team — then called the Michigan Wolverettes — took the court to perform at halftime of the men’s basketball game in Crisler Arena. The Wolverettes quickly became a fixture at basketball games and, in the 1990s, began appearing at football games as well.
Today, the Michigan Dance Team performs at a variety of campus events, including football and men’s and women’s basketball games. They also compete annually at the Universal Dance Association College Nationals and, in 2025, earned a program-best third-place finish.
Forty years later, Wolverette alumnae are proud to see new generations of dancers carrying the team forward. Kristin Oswald Borchardt, ’90, an original member, is the mother of identical twin daughters Courtney and Samantha Borchardt, juniors in the Ross School of Business who help lead the Michigan Dance Team as co-captains.
“Watching my twin daughters earn their places on the same college dance team that I was a part of almost 40 years ago has been an incredible gift,” Kristin says.
Katherine Fiorillo is the senior editor of Michigan Alum.
