The 11 members of the varsity dance team will join Ragazzi Boy Chorus’ Young Men’s Ensemble for a collaborative vocal and dance performance tomorrow at the Transfiguration Episcopal Church in San Mateo at 5 p.m.

This will be the varsity dancers’ second time performing with the Grammy award-winning, internationally-touring boys chorus. Founded in 1987, Ragazzi provides musical opportunities for over 200 male singers between the ages of seven and 18. They perform with many other Bay Area-based groups. The performance will feature some individual pieces from each group as well as a couple cooperative acts.

Karl Kuehn, the varsity dance coach as well as Ragazzi’s choreographer, started the collaboration between the two groups after a suggestion by Ragazzi’s staff.

“Last year, their artistic director approached me for a collaborative performance where their boys sing pieces and the girls dance while they’re singing, and the girls perform some pieces on their own and the boys perform some pieces on their own,” Kuehn said. “It’s kind of a fantastic collaboration between two performance groups.”

The girls have been preparing for Song and Dance for approximately a month, ever since the end of the Annual Dance Show. The pieces they will perform include some favorites from the Dance Show that have been restaged, including “This Bitter Earth” by Dinah Washington, choreographed by varsity dance captain Ankita Sharma (12), and “Insensitive”, a duet between Liana Wang (10) and Eddie Shiang (11). They will also introduce a new dance, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Lorde.

Pieces that the varsity dance team and Ragazzi will perform in conjunction are “Away from the Roll of the Sea” by Allister MacGillivray, “Gondolier” and “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan.

For the varsity girls, one of the biggest differences about this performance is the live singing rather than a track to dance to.

“We learned last year that it’s so different performing to a track recording like we do in Dance Show versus live orchestration and vocals where the tempo can increase and there’s all these variables that affect the performance,” Kuehn said. “It was really a fantastic performance opportunity for the Harker girls to dance to live music because you can only prepare yourself so much, but when it’s performed live, anything can happen. It’s also a really nice way to experience dance when you’re hearing music being performed live.”

For many of the dancers, this performance will be the first opportunity for them to experience dancing to live music rather than a track recording.

“I’m looking forward to dancing to live music because I’ve never really done that before and I think that’s really interesting,” junior Hazal Gurcan said. “It’s probably going to be a bit of a challenge but I think that it’ll be really fun.”

As a choreographer, Kuehn faced challenges in terms of the music counts. Dancers typically dance to music in counts of eight, but the music featured in this performance featured some unusual timings.

“It’s a challenge for me, kind of a new and fresh challenge, to choreograph to the songs. One of the songs is performed in German and one of the other songs is sixes and nines and twelves, so it’s quite a different form for choreography,” he said. “It’s a challenge for me but it’s a challenge I enjoy since it’s something new, and it’s fun for the girls to learn and to move in different ways as well.”

Anyone interested in attending can purchase tickets here. Tickets cost $10.