Dancing With the Stallions, an annual dance show that was once put on pause is now making a comeback.
The show first started in the second semester of 2024, and hasn’t happened since, due to a lack of enthusiasm.
This show gives students outside of the dance program the chance to experience what it’s like to be a part of a production under the guidance of another dance student. With this in mind, they’re also judged by a live audience and appointed judges Christine Boychuk, Ryan Norgren, Ruby Lagunas, and Leo Spengler.
Sign-ups for this show were posted outside the dance room months before the actual show date. However, there was very little hope of the show actually happening due to the lack of sign-ups in previous years. Miraculously, the minimum requirement of signups was met just before the deadline.
Once the show was confirmed, Stallions went straight into preparing for their upcoming performance. Much of the preparation is extensive, with students required to make their own choreography, find their own costumes, and provide a photo and video for the dance instagram.
“We had some holes in our choreography that we had to fix, but we were able to pull through and fix it with some practice,” said Nathan Von Urff (12).
Each pair must have a dance that’s at least two minutes long and an intro video that plays just before it that’s twenty seconds minimum. Once that’s all complete, the groups come in during lunch to meet hosts, Shane Joseph Roberts (12) and Sienna Wells (11), while also planning out the lighting and staging of their dances with Dance Director, Kristine Calder.
The dress rehearsal is a couple hours before the show and consists of each group running their dances once and getting quick feedback from Calder.
“It takes guts to perform in front of a live audience, especially since some of the contestants have never been on stage before,” said Kristine Calder.
Dance students have full freedom over who they choose to be their partners, but the only requirement is that the partner they choose must be a part of another extracurricular activity other than dance.
“I picked my partner because he was super excited to learn dance and is fun to hangout with,” said Summer Rice (11).
Dancing with the Stallions is a dance show that was created so everyone could share their passion and love for dance. The pairs brought diverse performances to the stage, all being competitive opponents to one another.
“I feel really confident about our dance, we could easily get top three,” said Von Urff (12).
After each group danced during the show day they received a score out of forty from the judges. Then towards the end, it was the audience’s turn to vote. Unlike other shows, the audience is able to scan a QR code to vote for their favorite performances.
The hosts then handed out trophies for the top three once the votes were counted. Cadence Henss (11) and Nathan Von Urff (12) won third place and Kimberly Bullock and Sunshine Lee (11) won second.
The audience then waited with anticipation for the winners of first place which went to Alicia Arambarri (12) and Ethan Covatta (11) who proudly held up the mirrorball trophy as the crowd cheered with support.
