With each grade’s quad day performance occurring Tuesday through Friday this week, dozens of students from each grade have been dedicating their time to putting on amazing shows. In recent weeks, tutorials, lunches, after school and even weekends, music can often be heard playing from speakers as students learn and rehearse their dances. Here is a look at what each class has been doing as part of this year’s overall theme of famous Warners Bros. movies.
Freshmen work to coordinate practice times
Drawing on their dance experience as members of the dance team, freshman class leads Ashlyn Hoang and Ariana Lau choreographed and created a dance that aims to level up to other grades and make the most of their Willy Wonka theme.
Lau choreographed for the girls’ dance, Hoang choreographed for the boys dance and they collaborated on the group dance. Freshman Mahika Shandilya and Ella Yang choreographed the Bollywood and taught the K-pop dance, respectively.
“We tried to make it as fun as possible and easy to learn; [we added] different textures and formations that will make the dance look finished,” Lau said. “We are trying to incorporate tricks, partner moves and fun trends that everyone knows.”
With approximately 40 to 50 freshmen participating in quad day, the leads ran into problems with planning and coordinating practices. To help alleviate the issue, they created a group chat with all of the participants to coordinate times, and the dancers who could attend reacted to their messages so the leads could adjust formations based on who couldn’t make it.
“We are definitely struggling trying to find a time when everyone was able to practice,” Hoang said.
Even with these challenges, Hoang and Lau feel they have worked hard to put together a strong performance for the freshmen. Because of the rain in the forecast, they will be performing in the gym.
Sophomores encourage participation through smart choreography pacing
Kayla Li and Sophie Qi are in charge of practices for the sophomores; Carter Wison and Tan Yu are the leads for the boys’ dance and Elaine Luo is teaching the K-pop dance. Their dances and script center on the beloved Harry Potter franchise.
They organized their practices by using a spreadsheet that keeps track of times when everyone is available. Using this information, they scheduled practices at the times that worked best for everyone.
During practices, the leads tried to teach the harder movements first so people had more time to learn and rehearse those before moving on to easier moves and dances. They also put a lot of thought and consideration into choosing songs.
“We chose the songs based on how well it fit the theme and the opinions of everyone else,” Luo said. “We also tried to pick songs that were slightly easier to learn because not everyone has experience in dance, and it would take a lot longer to learn hard dances.”
However, the sophomores have struggled with a lack of participation and getting everyone to come to practices. Despite being one of the smaller groups, with about 30 to 40 participants, they are still working hard to produce a great show. With the forecast uncertain for Wednesday, it’s unclear whether they’ll be performing in the quad or inside the gym.
Juniors have high hopes for their performance
Alma Garniek and Kathy Yaung led the practices for the Class of ‘27, which features songs like “Nokia” by Drake, “Miss Possessive” by Tate McRae and “Hot in Herre” by Nelly. They received the Justice League as their sub-theme.
The juniors organized their practices through an Instagram group chat where they sent out polls to see which times worked for everyone and followed through on that. Their practices have taken place on Sundays, and as quad day comes closer, they’ve moved practices to tutorials.
In the girls’ dance, each of the choreographers created their own dances to four songs.
“For [my song], I didn’t really take [inspiration] from anywhere, so it was just what came to me with the music,” Garniek said.
In the group dance, Garniek said they used a bit of inspiration from online, but mostly they just came up with routines on their own.
One of the biggest obstacles they faced was with coordinating practices and finding times that worked around everyone’s busy schedules. Despite this, Garniek believes they’ve prepared a spectacular performance.
“The juniors are going to win this year!” Garniek said.
Seniors step up in participation and energy
Shirina Cao, Thalea Charton and May Gendeh are the main leads for the Class of ‘26. Since the senior theme is “Barbie,” they tried to incorporate elements of the doll’s world into their dances.
For their girls’ dances, they are dancing to “Breaking Dishes” by Rihanna, “Dance the Night Away” by Dua Lipa “Just Keep Watching” by Tate McRae, “Rude Boy” by Rihanna and “Vroom Vroom” by Charli xcx, with the songs split up between all the choreographers.
For Charton, her choreographing process included looking up the song on TikTok and taking inspiration from other choreographers, then putting her own twist on it.
“If there’s any choreography that has already been made, I try to watch it and see if there’s any moves, and I try to kind of incorporate that into my choreography,” Charton said.
A setback the choreographers are dealing with is that many seniors are trying to join at the last minute as they realize it’s their last chance to do so in high school.
The addition of new performers made it hard for the choreographers to reset formations. They now have 90 seniors in total participating.
The leads organized their practices using group chats to send out polls to find practice times that worked for everyone. They also created a shared Google Drive where step-by-step tutorials, reference videos and audios were accessible for people to practice with.
The seniors are excited to have more participation than in the previous three years; they are also including a partner and dancers’ dance in their lineup for the first time.
Despite busy schedules, long practices and last-minute changes, each class has worked hard to create performances that showcase their talent, teamwork and school spirit and overcoming obstacles such as rainy whether and shifting performance locations.