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Junior Caitlin Coble took a step into the auditorium and received a brand new script. All the musical cast members sit in a circle and introduce themselves to one another. Junior William McKee read the first line and the read-through begins.
Participating in almost all the numbers, Coble is a featured dancer in the fall musical “All Shook Up.” Alongside seven other dancers, she is in the number “Blue Suede Shoes,” one of the more challenging numbers.
“There’s a lot of dynamics to get down and a lot of starting and stopping with different people,” Coble said. “Getting it to go all together is difficult, but it’s a small group with a lot of experienced tappers, so it’ll be really easy to clean in a sense, and I think it’ll look really good.”
Senior Peter Dessert said he feels like the musical features a variety of dances in comparison to other schools.
“I’d say our program is definitely a tap program,” Dessert said. “When you compare it to other high schools, I don’t think many of them have it at all, but we tend to do it kind of every year.”
According to the musical director Kathryn Berry, “Jailhouse Rock” and “Blue Suede Shoes” are two of the more challenging numbers in the show.
“It’s a major dance scene with moving set pieces and it has almost the entire cast on stage,” Berry said.
Dessert said that he thinks the most fun number in the musical is “Jailhouse Rock” because of everything going on during the song.
“We do a bunch of lifts,” Dessert said. “The girls tumble. It’s a really fun song to sing as well.”
Students have tapped in the two previous shows, “Oklahoma” and “Mary Poppins.” The theater department won an award from the Cappies, which is an organization that recognizes schools for their work.
“We did a tap number a couple of years back in ‘Mary Poppins’ called ‘Step in Time,’ and it was 10 minutes long,” Dessert said. “We all love that number and still talk about it. We won an award for it.”
Berry said that her favorite number was “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” because of the emotion delivered with the song. At this point in the show, eight out of the 10 main characters have fallen deeply in love with each other.
“It’s the end of Act One and it doesn’t have a lot of dancing, but it’s one of the most emotional numbers and has some of the best singing and ensemble,” Berry said.
Dessert also said that “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” was his favorite song as well because of the way it is sung.
“The harmonies that the composers layered in that song are just actually nuts,” Dessert said. “The guy parts really high. But it’s fun. It’s like the end of that to everyone’s kind of delivering almost like a soliloquy to the person they love, but it’s like 10 people at once.”
For sophomore Luke Allen, who is tap dancing for the first time in the show, the musical has been a way to connect with people who have the same interests,
“I really enjoy getting to meet new people and hanging out with all my friends after school, and I feel like although the whole process is kind of rough, it pays off in the end,” Allen said.
