When Lilly Roser first tried dancing at age 5, she wanted nothing to do with it. It left her cold. “I hated it,” the Easton High senior recalled. “I didn’t have the attention span for it.”
But three years later a friend talked her into giving it a second try. Though it took a while, she fell in love with it. And she’s been immersed in dancing ever since and has won several state competitions. Her specialty is musical theater and contemporary. She doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon. She’s eyeing both dancing in college and after college.
Roser carries a 4.0 weighted grade-point average and has applied to Florida State, Wake Forest, North Carolina, Elon, and North Carolina. She wants to double major in dance and broadcast journalism.
“Dance is a really short-lived career,” Roser says. “If I went with a dance company it would be for the first few years of my life after college. I can pursue it in college and train with a dance company outside the college. I will be dancing in some shape or form.”
Dancing for all these years has led to another passion: pageants. She competed in Miss World America in Las Vegas in October and finished as third runner-up among some 40 participants.
The pageant, advertised as “beauty with a purpose,” involves public speaking, dancing, and a public-service platform. Roser’s platform was the “Hidden Hunger Epidemic–Tackling Malnutrition.” Her goal is to establish hunger coalitions in 24 areas of Maryland. Her video explaining her platform won first place.
“When I was introduced to pageants, I realized a true intersection of all my favorite things,” she says. “For me, it’s like a dance competition with so many more phases and opportunities. For me, it’s the best of both worlds.”
Victory Ram, owner of Be Victorious Prep, in Essex, trains the 5-foot-5 Roser for the pageants. Roser makes the nearly two-hour commute from her home in Easton twice a week.
“What led her to the top is her dancing talent,” Ram says of her impressive showing in the Miss World America. “Lilly is an incredible dancer. For her having this success so easily in Vegas is a testament to her confidence and who she is as a person. She is so generous, so loveable and so real. It doesn’t happen very often that you do so well on your first shot in nationals.”
Roser qualified for Miss World America after finishing as first runner-up in the Miss Maryland competition in June, in Hagerstown. “It was my first pageant,” Roser says.
But the 17-year-old enjoyed herself even more in her three trips to Las Vegas. Her first two trips came in 2016 (Miss Teen Dance Icon Maryland) and 2017 (Miss Senior Dance Icon Maryland).
All of her success doesn’t surprise Jessica Hindman of the Eastern Shore Dance Academy in Cambridge and has trained Roser for nine years.
“She is very flexible and has an amazing stage presence,” Hindman says. “She is one of those girls you just can’t take your eyes off of when she is on stage. She is just a great performer. She has a wow factor. I think she will probably make dancing a profession.”
Her tremendous work ethic is also a big factor in how she’s come this far. For four years, up until she started high school, Roser often practiced seven days a week. Part of her commitment involved performing in the “The Nutcracker,” which involves months of rehearsal leading up the holiday season performance.
“She has sacrificed friendships,” says Roser’s mother Donna of her commitment to dancing. “She said to me one time. ‘I wish you got me into other sports so I could have that friendship that comes with teams.’”
Despite the time she puts into dancing and her studies, Roser also devotes as many hours as she can to her core community service effort by working with various organizations. With the Bay Area Community Church-Easton, Roser has traveled on mission trips to El Salvador twice and the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia.
“I go on a mission trip ever summer,” Roser explains. “It makes me a stronger person. I use my resources and time to help others who may not have the resources to help themselves. In El Salvador, you are delivering things to homes with no beds and nothing but a dirt floor. It’s an experience that I am forever grateful for.”
Roser also volunteers for Talbot County Hunger Coalition, Talbot Interfaith Shelter, Maryland food bank of Feeding America, and Rise Against Hunger. She is president of Easton High’s Rotary Interactive Club, which helps Rise Against Hunger plan and organize its yearly food drive in Easton.
“It’s so impactful,” Roser says. “Last year, we raised over 20,000 meals that went overseas.”
