Local Dancer Wins National Competition

With a trophy taller than she is, Sarah Frangenberg is basking in a whirlwind summer after being named Miss DMI Senior National Soloist for 2013, rushing off to college at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), and planning her all expenses paid year of touring for DanceMakers, Inc.

Frangenberg, a graduate of Kapaun-Mt. Carmel High School, won the solo competition at the DanceMakers, Inc. Nationals in Myrtle Beach, North Carolina. Her contemporary pointe solo, which she also choreographed, utilized the music, This Bitter Earth, a rhythm & blues song made famous by Dinah Washington in 1960. She will be touring with a select group of dancers called “The Collective” to as many as 16 cities in the next year.

“Dancing is what I’m supposed to do in life,” said Frangenberg, who has been taking dance lessons most of her life. “It’s who I am.”

She comes by her interest from her mother, Sydney Frangenberg,who started dancing at age two with Joan Reeder at Workshop East in Wichita. She now teaches at Kansas Dance Academy (KDA) where Sarah and her sister, Sophi, study.

Frangenberg has won several regional and national awards over the years since her association with KDA, according to Diane Gans, owner of the academy. Frangenberg also attended the Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia in both 2009 and 2010.

From the September, 2013 issue of East Wichita News.

By Cathy Feemster

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash – downloaded on October 18, 2026.