As Thanksgiving break quickly approached, students felt overcome with anxiety and desire to be let out for the holiday. However, for our SJHHS dancers, the end of the week brought the excitement of the long awaited Fusion Dance Production, with shows on November 22 and November 23.

Fusion gave our school’s dancers the opportunity to showcase their abilities in the genre of their choice. Whether lyrical and contemporary or hip-hop and jazz, students chose the style that they would preform, and an appropriate choreographer was brought in to give them the material.

“For the first time, Fusion involved Musical Theater which is a really rare and unique style of dance,” said Alana Durham, junior.

Two of the three levels of SJHHS dance were involved in the show, Beginning Intermediate and Dance Production. According to Kristine Calder, dance adviser, the classes had worked on their numbers for seven weeks, and the curtain date very quickly approached.

“Putting together a show in a short amount of time and getting the needed information from all our guest performers within the timeline was definitely the most difficult part of the process,” said Calder.

Fusion is the only show of the school year that included guest performances from “local dance studios, high schools, and the community college, all the other shows are just us,” and the dancers found it very rewarding to “see other local dance programs up on our stage,” said Calder.

SJHHS dancers and instructors spent endless hours of time preparing for the major show, ensuring that every number was perfect by the time they hit the stage for the first time. “The hardest part about Fusion was cleaning the dances,” said Durham, but “seeing what our dancers could accomplish in a short amount of time was very rewarding,” Calder said.

Choreographer’s Ball is the next SJHHS dance show. It will take place in the spring and is based on “Dancing Through the Pages”, a spin on literature and books in general.