As the music crescendoed to a beat drop during their quad day performance on Sept. 21, junior performers Steven Ning, Caleb Yu, and Dylan Wilson leapt into the air, each hurdling over three of their fellow performers beneath them as part of a stunt dance.
This carefully choreographed scene was just one in a series of dances, stunts and skits for the Class of 2025. Themed after the Disney movie “Cars,” the performance featured students playing several characters from the show, with Rylee Stanton as Lightning McQueen, Ryan Backhus as Doc Hudson, Natalie Zaragoza as Mater, Timothy Leung as Sally and Tanuj Siripurapu as Fillmore.
The production followed McQueen, who was challenged to represent Saratoga in a race against Cupertino, the opponent in the Homecoming football game. McQueen’s journey throughout the production was represented by a collection of dances and skits, all woven together to form a comprehensive storyline.
With more than 70 participants, preparation for the performance began in early September. Despite having sufficient signups and three weeks to prepare, the juniors struggled to get everyone together often enough to be fully prepared.
“Because it’s junior year, a lot of people are ditching practice because they’re really busy with school and extracurriculars,” said Jasmine Liu, one of the choreographic heads for the performance. “We had poor attendance for some dances and it was really inconsistent.”
As a result, she said videos were sent out to those who had missed practice to prepare for the dance. Even then, the juniors still had to cut out several dancers in their performance to make it run as smoothly as possible.
This lack of attendance for rehearsals made the preparation for the dance to become very difficult to manage, causing a scramble among the students, organizers said.
“The preparation was really, really stressful,” skit head Timothy Leung said. “A lot of things were put together hastily, and we weren’t really sure if we were going to be able to do it.”
Despite these struggles, the juniors were able to pull through with a surge of commitment and resolve during the few days before homecoming, leading to a successful performance. Leung noted that the quality of the performance during Quad Day exceeded that of the practice dances.
“We all felt really committed and the last couple practices and also did last minute tutorial practices to make sure that everyone got it,” Leung said. “It definitely was a big challenge, but somehow we pulled through and I’m really proud of it.”
