TIGER TV CONTRIBUTOR
Three LSU Tiger Girls were chosen to be dancers in the new Carrie Underwood song “Cowboy Casanova.”
Lauren Hammond, LSU senior from Slidell, La., Heidi Hankin, LSU senior from Lake Charles, La., and Katherine Frederickson, LSU freshman from Baton Rouge, La., auditioned for a music video at a casting call in New Orleans, La. but didn’t know who the artist was. The only information they were told was that the artist was a multi-platinum award winning female artist.
“My studio dance teacher told me about the auditions so I sent in a tape,” Frederickson said. Hammond and Hankin participated in the live auditions.
The audition was on a Thursday and they were told nothing until late Sunday night.
“All three of us pretty much spent the entire weekend together just waiting for a response,” Hammond said. “We all received the email Sunday night and that’s when we found out the music video was going to be for Carrie Underwood.”
The email also asked the participants to keep the musician a secret until the video was released.
After receiving the email, things moved quickly. The three Tiger Girls, along with two women from Texas and one from Lafayette, La., rehearsed the dances with the choreographer the following Tuesday and Wednesday at a hotel ballroom in New Orleans. Underwood rehearsed with the women on the second day.
Filming of the video took two days in New Orleans. The days were long, girls said, not finishing until the early hours of the morning.
The Tiger Girls said Carrie Underwood was shy in person but comfortable in front of the camera.
“She was so tiny and short,” Hammond says. “It was amazing to see such a small person with such an amazing strong singing voice.”
“Sometimes during the tapings the choreographer would decide to change part of the dance, show us one time and expect us to be able to do it,” Hankin said. “We have to learn game day dances fast so our experience with LSU Tiger Girls helped a lot.”
Underwood even joked about the girls dance skills. She gave herself a 1.5 on a scale of one to 10 and said they were like a 10.
The video can be viewed on CMT’s website.
