With Double Wolf Dare Week (DWDW) coming to an end, day fours day event was the Boy Bands assembly. During Boy Bands, a group of boys from each grade perform a series of dances coached by pom and cheer girls.
To begin the assembly, Santa Fe’s treble show choir, Serenade, sang the national anthem, after which Student Council (STUCO) played the recap video made by Santa Fe’s broadcasting team.
Senior and STUCO member Adyson Zamudio brought in judges and began introducing them as: Kristen James, Jaqueline Bessinger, Kc Williams and a surprise guest-Taylor Williams.
Taylor Williams is an alum from Santa Fe, but he is more known for his appearance on season seven of Love Island. Before Love Island he was and still is a model, he has modeled for popular brands like Louis Vuitton, Timberland, Wrangler and more. He has even walked the runway in Paris for Louis Vuitton.
Starting with the freshmen boy band, their group made their way out onto the court and went into positions. They had matching outfits coordinating with their class color for the DWDW dress up day. Their outfits included a light blue tutu, customized shirts to look like a jersey with their last name, graduation year and a blue mask they later took off during their performance.
All of the groups had to find ways to practice during the weeks leading up to DWDW, for some it was squeezing quick last minute practices or planning dates weeks in advance.
“We practiced one-two times a week, anywhere from one-three hours a piece,” freshman Boy Bands coach Allison Ewers said.
The group made their own playlist of clips of songs that they wanted to dance and choreograph to. Their performance included popular songs like “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC, “My House” by Beyonce, “Power” by Kanye West and more.
“Boy bands is really fun,” freshman and Boy Bands member Carter Nall said. “I enjoy it a lot. Along the way we had a few difficulties, like learning how to catch a stunt.”
To end the freshmen’s performance, the coaches handed the boys light blue umbrellas that they swayed around to the song “Umbrella” by Rihanna.
“My best memory from doing boy bands this year was the final performance,” freshman and Boy Bands coach Jalynne Brandell said. “I was so proud of the boys and us coaches for making the routine come together.”
The next performance was from the sophomores, and STUCO member Morgan French prepared the crowd. Soon after the sophomore boys came out in matching tracksuits. They had on pink pants with a white hoodie; on the hoodies they had hashtags with their stage name on them. Some of the names were: “#GoldieLocks”, “#PDawg” and “#Suzz”.
Throughout the performance they had a series of accessories such as prop money and bubble gum that they threw out into the crowd, fake gold chains, pink wigs, blow up hobby horses and even a segment where boy band member Holden Howard imitated senior Boy Band member Jarell Hull and purposefully missed a basketball dunk.
“The theme of our outfits came from the fact that pink was the color for sophomores for the dress up day, and then we got to choose the songs with the boys and these songs went with some of the props,” sophomore and Boy Bands coach Livi Brown said.
Some groups experienced disagreements when it came to dance moves and song choices.
“There were a lot of difficulties, like getting on the same page at practice,” Howard said.
Following the sophomores, the juniors were next in line. They began their performance emerging from the audience dressed in all black. For outfit change one they put on black suit jackets, with another one soon after. Their class color was purple; underneath their hoodies they had on matching purple shirts with their graduation year and nickname on the back.
“We come up with the theme based on whatever our DWDW theme is,” junior and Boy Bands coach Kathryn Wilson said, “With Thursday usually being class colors, and this year we had purple, we made sure to incorporate purple props, such as confetti, and fun songs like ‘Purple Rain’.”
Similarly to the sophomores they also included a segment for Hull, but the juniors had a cardboard cut out of his face where Eli Fina dunked on his face.
“My favorite part of boy bands was this year when I did the dunk skit,” Fina said.
Towards the end of their performance, they ended up bringing out cardboard cutouts of the whole senior Boy Bands team. They danced on top of the senior’s faces and tried ripping them but they were unable to. The juniors ended their performance with a confetti cannon.
Lastly, the seniors took the stage. While they got set up and into position, they played their skit video showing their overall theme-criminals/inmates.
“We have wanted to do a cop theme since freshman year so we could use the razor as a ‘cop car’,” senior and Boy Bands coach Ruby Dantzler said.
They also incorporated neon masks, different colored suit jackets and a parody of a Love Island dance with suitcases.
The seniors are the ones responsible for bringing Taylor Williams, but most of the credit goes to Adyson Zamudio.
“I got Taylor to come back in July when he was riding his horses around a neighborhood and from then we talked to him through Ms. Hanson,” Zamudio said. “We wanted a good special guest and in that moment, I just thought to ask because he’s the perfect person: an alum and was on Love Island from Oklahoma.”
Ending their performance with a dance circle around Taylor Williams and bringing back the basketball theme from the last two performances, Hull dunked. After their performance, the students from all grades ran up to Taylor Williams to try and get a picture with him.
Boy Bands is a five-minute performance with weeks and even months of practice and preparement, but comes with memories and friendships.
“My favorite part was obviously the dancing, and my best memory was all the times Jarell got flamed for the missed dunk, or the time in rehearsal when Caleb wouldn’t do a cartwheel and everyone was getting on him, including his dad,” senior and Boy Bands member Austin Rhymes said.
To view all of the Boy Bands performances click here.
