Dazzling visitors to Santana Row with an hour long performance, the Varsity dance troupe, JV dance troupe, Kinetic Krew and Downbeat performed at the Santana Row Tree Lighting Ceremony on Tuesday.

Santana Row celebrates the holiday season annually with the Tree Lighting Ceremony which includes a variety of performances and the lighting of a 40-foot Christmas tree.

Kinetic Krew had their first performance, dancing to a dubstepped version of “Jingle Bells.” This is the first all-boys dance team at Harker. It was created this year to give male dancers the opportunity to be part of a dance troupe.

“It’s nice, considering that before we didn’t have a high school dance team for boys, but now we do, and I enjoy it,” Timothy Wang (9), a member of Kinetic Krew, said.

The JV dance troupe performed routines to the Christmas classic “Let it Snow” by Michael Buble and Lady Gaga’s hit “Applause.”

Both dance teams spent several weeks preparing for this performance. They rehearsed their routine for “Let It Snow” for about a month, according to Rachelle Haun, director of the JV team. Dancers started learning the routine for “Applause” a few months ago, but then stopped to practice for their performance at the Family Picnic in October.

“They pretty much use the entire class time every time they come in to just get the choreography down,” Haun said.“There’s been a lot of new skills for them, so they’ve had to work a little bit harder to reach them.”

The practices prior to this show were intense. Performers worked hard transitioning between their picnic performances to their holiday performances. Members of Downbeat especially worked on learning new scores of music.

“They have to learn a lot of music because they also go on tour right after Thanksgiving,” Jennifer Sandusky, co-director of Downbeat, said. “ It’s a lot of music [learned] quickly, so right now they have their pieces for Santana Row learned really well and they are starting to learn the choreography.”

Gallery • 3 Photos

Nicole Chen

Namitha Vellian (12), Rishabh Chandra (12) and Helen Woodruff (12) make an announcement before the Varsity dance troupe’s during the Santana Row Tree Lighting ceremony. All three of these students are in downbeat which also performed in the show.

Downbeat prepared an up-tempo jazz routine of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,”and a jazz rendition of “Deck the Halls.” The Varsity dance troupe performed a swingy jazz number to an upbeat big band version of “Jingle Bells.” Karl Kuehn, director of the varsity dance team, commented on the importance of this ceremony for the groups that participate.

“It is a great opportunity for them to showcase their talents at a large venue with an audience that is excited to celebrate the holidays,” Kuehn said.

Throughout this performing experience, the students had a chance to connect with each other and their teachers through rehearsals and practices.

“It’s one of those events where we spend a lot of time together. One, to prepare. And then when we get there on the day, we are there from two until seven on, which doesn’t sound like that much time, but in that time we’re essentially walking all over Santana Row,” Rishabh Chandra (12) said. “It’s something that you remember down the road. I still remember what we did last year at Santana Row.”

This performance gives students a unique experience of performing outside of Harker at a large venue.

“For the kids, it is such a really high energy performing opportunity with such a huge crowd and the learning experience is something different than they are going to get from another performance that they do here. They have to learn how to really sell in a really big way,” Sandusky said.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on November 20, 2015.