A sea of students crowded the bleachers each day during the week of Oct. 14-19 for each grade’s Homecoming quad day performances. The dances were energetic and exciting, with several students participating in more than one dance for their grade. To make these dances possible, a couple of students in each grade — usually ones with experience as dancers — took the initiative to choreograph, teach and coordinate each dance — an enormous and often under-the-radar undertaking.
Freshmen choreographers energize their first quad day performance
The freshmen divided the choreography roles between their four dances: all-girls’ dance, group, K-pop and Bollywood. Freshman Kayla Li, Elaine Luo and Sophie Qi choreographed the girls’ dance. Freshman Audrey Lenh and Isla Thomson choreographed the group dance. Freshman Mira Jishnu, Grace Liu and Grace Luo choreographed K-pop. Freshman Sanvi Arramreddy and Vedika Venugopal choreographed Bollywood.
For Jishnu, Liu and Luo, the K-pop choreography process was easier to coordinate because their dances had already been produced and performed by the groups who wrote the songs. Yet after doing her first quad day performance, Jishnu found there was still room for improvement.
“We didn’t have a lot of people, so the transitions weren’t as good,” Jishnu said. “It wasn’t like anybody messed up, but it wasn’t the best we could have done.”
In the future, Jishnu hopes K-pop can take advantage of the popularity of more mainstream songs and incorporate both better transitions between the songs and more complex formations.
When Isla and Lenh choreographed the group dance together, Isla received tips and advice from some of her friends in higher grades and her mother, science teacher Kristen Thomson, who has often choreographed the staff performance over the years.
To align with their theme, Jumanji, they picked “Roar” by Katy Perry. Then, they choreographed the dances together until they were satisfied, meeting during lunch every day to work together.
“I’ve made choreography before, because I dance. I have also choreographed for the teachers’ dances, which made the whole process easier for me,” Isla said. “For the most part, everyone tried their best and was really positive the whole time, so [teaching the dance] was really great.”
Sophomore choreographers pulled through for their second year
Sophomores Sia Bharadhwaj, Alma Garniek, Hannah Hwang, Chloe Nguyen, Lauren Nguyen, Evangelia Stepanchenko and Cathy Yaung choreographed the all-girls’ dance. As head choreographer, Yaung worked with Bharadhwaj and Garniek to make the group dance. Sophomores Sam Roh and Claire Jung choreographed for the K-pop dance. Chloe and Lauren Nguyen, sisters who are part of a set of triplets with their brother Noah, choreographed the boys’ dance.
In order to save time and avoid conflict, the seven choreographers for girls’ partnered up in groups of two or three, and each pair was responsible for choreographing 50 seconds of the dance.
To bring their vision to life, Hwang and Yaung met up and choreographed during multiple tutorials, as well as used this time to discuss formation choices. Hwang said the constant communication with all of the choreographers kept the whole process organized.
“I think our performance was way more fun and better than last year. I also feel that Cathy and I improved from last year in terms of choreography, and it was more entertaining,” Hwang said.
In addition to choreographing their 50 seconds of the all-girls’ dance, the Nguyen girls filled in for the original boys’ dance choreographer, Motekiai Pahulu, who was unable to choreograph because of an unforeseen health issue he suffered during a Oct. 4 football game against Monta Vista High School.
“I felt our performance wasn’t as hype as last year because of a declining number of people, especially in the girls’ dance,” Lauren Nguyen said. “We still had a great time making the dances and hope to come back stronger next year.”
Junior Choreographers blew everyone away with their choreography
Junior choreographers also split themselves between coordinating the all-girls’ group, group, K-pop and boys’ dances.
Juniors Shirina Cao, Thalea Charton and May Gendeh choreographed the all-girls’ and group dances. Cao, Gendeh, juniors Clairice Lee, Aries Shi and Linda Shi choreographed the K-pop dance. As head choreographer, junior Blue Chankhunthod choreographed the boys’ dance with juniors Patrick Keogh and Spencer Thompson.
To choreograph the boys’ dance, Chankhunthod thought of funny trends, discussed ideas with the participating boys and put everyone’s ideas together. The choreographing process became more of a group effort, as the boys pitched in moves they found entertaining.
“For our grade especially, the girls are really good, and the guys just do funny [stuff]. The way I do it, I like to think: ‘What would be funny to do or what’s popular right now?’” Chankhunthod said.
After three years of leading both group and girls’, Gendeh now has a system for creating her pieces.
To come up with choreography, she first takes the most well-known part of the song and starts freestyling to it. She listens to the music and tries to add movements that follow the flow of the song. This process also helps her decide if a song is a good choice.
“If I’m not naturally able to put out movements to a song, then I know it’s not the right song for me to choreograph to,” Gendeh said.
After the performance ended, Gendeh regretted not starting practices earlier. The juniors suffered from low participation this year — partially due to higher academic loads — and Gendeh found this demotivating when dedicating time to come up with dances.
Senior choreographers hyped up the crowd for their last performance
Senior choreographers divided themselves for their six dances: partners, Bollywood, K-pop, all-boys’ dance, all-girls’ dance and group.
Seniors Katie Berger, Anisa Taymuree and Saejel Thomas choreographed the girls’ dance. Berger and Taymuree choreographed the group dance. Thomas, seniors Shaan Janardhan and Juhi Karamcheti choreographed the Bollywood dance. Seniors Annaliese Shab and Justin Choi choreographed the K-pop dance. Seniors Mihir Shaik, Naahur Sajwan and Gautham Jasti choreographed the boys’ dance.
Shaik, Sajwan and Jasti worked together to choreograph the boys’ dance. Once they chose a song, they watched dance videos, either from that song or similar ones, for inspiration.
Then, after piecing together moves they already knew the trio freestyled in between the gaps.
Having worked together for three years already, the three know each other’s specialties. The choreographic process has become so easy that choosing songs is the hardest part of the process.
“It’s really fun to choreo, because everyone who does the dance is my friend,” Shaik said. “It’s less about the actual dance and more about everyone having a great time learning. Being able to perform the dances that we made is really fun, but the real fun is in the practices.”
According to Taymuree, choreographing a quad day performance is a large time commitment. It was especially stressful this year because Homecoming week was in the middle of October, just two weeks before early college applications deadlines. Class of ‘25 has consistently shown high participation for quad days, so Taymuree saw the impact of college applications through the decline in number of practice attendees.
“That’s just kind of a hardship because, as a choreographer, I have to balance college applications and quad day, and college applications are really important to my future — more so than a letter grade from a homework assignment that I missed. We had to make a lot of sacrifices,” Taymuree said.
Taymuree noted that she had to drop out of Bollywood to manage her time, and seniors also cut their stunt act. For her last quad day, Taymuree felt it was bittersweet — she knew she would miss working with her peers, but not the stress that always came with preparing for the performances.
All in all, being a choreographer for quad day comes with greater responsibility than required of a normal participant. However, these extra hours are displayed for the school to see during Homecoming week, and choreographers almost always feel a sense of gratification after the performance is over — both from the accomplishment of choreographing and from the memories with friends.
“I love quad day, but it does take a lot of my time and has consistently put me through a lot of stress,” Taymuree said. “I honestly think it is worth it to see the performance at the end, and it provides a lot of unity with my class. So, the sacrifice of my grade is sometimes worth having the memory.”
