Mark Shelley is hoping for an encore presentation.

The Lexington Medical Center director of marketing was in the director’s chair as the hospital claimed first place in last year’s inaugural international Pink Glove Dance video contest. This year, he’s back at the helm as the hospital seeks a second straight title in the contest, sponsored by Medline Industries, that honors cancer survivors and raises awareness about breast cancer.

[Below the story: Video from last year's Pink Glove dance]

The winner again will earn $10,000 for an organization of its choosing that supports breast cancer research.

The Lexington Medical Center video features more than 700 employees dancing with pink gloves to the Katy Perry song, “Part of Me.” Hospital employees filmed the finale for the video outside the hospital Thursday evening to wrap up the Broadway-style production that uses special effects, smoke and strobe lights.

This year’s video is “bigger, better, bolder and over-the-top,” Shelley says, but he admits there is some pressure coming in as defending champions.

“I think the biggest pressure is topping what we did last year,” he said. “And not just making it better but making it unique and meaningful and achieving its ultimate objective, which is to raise awareness for breast cancer.”

The video, entitled “Survivor from Day 1,” spotlights the strength and courage shown by breast cancer patients from the time of diagnosis. The video focuses on hospital nurse Amy Kinard, a breast cancer survivor of five years, and features nearly 30 other hospital employees who are breast cancer survivors.

“It’s more than a video or a contest. It’s a show of support for everyone in our community who is fighting cancer,” Shelley said.

Shelley said when preparing for the video, the hospital drew from the experiences of various cancer personnel, doctors, social workers, nurses – all of whom encourage patients to see themselves as survivors from the day they are diagnosed.

“When we were planning for the video, that kept coming up as an essential concept of our program, so we came up with ‘Survivor from Day 1,’ ” Shelley said.

From there, the challenge was telling the stories in a fun and creative way.

“There are a number of things we did that were a little – OK, a lot – over the top, from skydiving to boating to a rock star concert-type finale,” Shelley said.

Hospital employees credit Shelley’s tenacity with the precision of the production.

“He knows what he wants and he knows how to get it,” Kinard said. “I’ve never acted before so I worried I’d disappoint him. He made me feel at ease and was very reassuring.”

Shelley was so supportive, in fact, that he accompanied Kinard on a plane jump celebrating her five-year anniversary of being cancer free. “If I was going to do it, he was going to do it,” Kinard said.

Lexington Medical Center claimed last year’s Pink Glove competition with more than 60,000 votes, winning over more than 130 other health care organizations in the United States and Canada.

Video from the 2011 Pink Glove Dance

Lexington Medical doctors, nurses, administrators and other support staff — including several breast-cancer survivors — gathered on the hospital grounds last September to tape the final 40 seconds of a video they submitted to the national Medline "Pink Glove Dance" video contest. Video by Bertram Rantin.

Voting for this year’s Pink Glove Dance 2012 will run from Oct. 12-26. Residents can vote for the video by hitting “Like” at pinkglovedance.com Participants must have a Facebook account to vote and can only vote once.