Debbie Kishpaugh, the creative force behind Pendleton High School’s six straight state dance titles, found herself at a crossroads last year as she geared up to design a routine for the 2014 championships.

Her creative juices weren’t exactly drying up, but they weren’t flowing like Niagara Falls either. She had thrown everything she had into last year’s “A Psycho Circus” and other previous choreography that had racked up a total of seven state championships.

The solution? Crank it up a notch by entering the ultra-challenging Show category. This division requires top-notch dancing, of course, but also a set, props and an avalanche of dramatic flair.

Coach Kishpaugh had considered making the move before, but never so strongly. Her current crop of dancers, she thought, could pull this off. Some of the seniors had been on a squad of Pendleton dancers that had won a 2006 national hip-hop title.

“They had been trailblazers in the past,” Kishpaugh said. “We decided this would be the year.”

The team heads to state competition on Thursday with competition Friday and finals on Saturday at Portland’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Kishpaugh said she had expected possible pushback from parents, but encountered mostly support. The dancers immediately got caught up in Kishbaugh’s contagious enthusiasm.

“We knew Debbie was ready for something bigger,” said Hannah Smith, a senior who danced on that 2009 hip-hop championship team. “We were ready for a challenge. We wanted to truly spread our wings.”

As her athletes learned the routine, Kishpaugh commissioned inmates from the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution to make a haunted house and six 10-foot pillars that dancers could easily move during the competition.

On Monday evening at Pendleton High School, the 32 dancers unveiled the routine to the public.

In the locker room before the performance, make-up artists gave each girl a subtle, sickly white skin cast, then painted a dramatic patch of glittery purple and black around each eye. Hairdressers ratted the girls’ hair and used four bobby pins to affix tiny hats of tulle netting, ribbons and feathers. They would need those pins to defy gravity during Kishpaugh’s athletic choreography.

Outside the locker room, sophomore Morgan Lockwood donned an elaborate spider costume with the help of two others. Lockwood, her face covered with black, pulled up her knee-high Batman socks and slipped into a new persona. Assistants attached a furry arachnid back with four legs made from cloth-covered pool noodles fitted onto wooden dowels. She climbed onto stilts covered with black sleeves to add two more spider legs and leaned on two more stilt legs with her arms. The spider’s eyes glowed red.

Lockwood, one of Kishpaugh’s surprises, would make a cameo appearance.

In this new division, teams have 15 minutes to do everything — lay down a huge floor covering, place set pieces and props, dance and remove everything. Kishpaugh cued the timer as her dancers entered the gym.

First came unfolding and laying down a 462-pound patch of reinforced vinyl to cover the floor. Senior Rebecca Wagner directed the action with loud, succinct directions as the dancers unfolded on command and made the 90-by-45-foot surface smooth. A haunted house with glowing red windows came next, along with six pillars adorned with skulls, eyeballs and blood splatters.

The 32 dancers got set, remaining still until ghostly tones began flowing from Warberg Court speakers. Music and choreography wove together into a dark, intense Kishpaugh-esque blend inspired by the trailer from “The Haunting.” As they danced, some of the performers pushed pillars and the house around the floor. Lockwood in her spider costume gracefully wove her way among the dancers.

After almost five minutes, the music faded and the dancers froze into a tableau. Flushed by effort, they went into the next phase, rolling off the set pieces and refolding the floor covering.

Elapsed time: 14:15.

The crowd seemed impressed.

“It gave me chills,” said Brenda Varner. Her two daughters danced in previous years and coming to this yearly send-off performance is an addiction now.

Kishpaugh seemed jazzed by her dancers’ talent and intensity. Other coaches had warned that this transition to the Show division is a rough one, but she remains positive about the team’s chances.

“We are ranked third in state — two-tenths of a point from second,” she said. “I think these kids can do it.”

Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810.

This story originally appeared in East Oregonian.