Screams and laughs of kindergarteners echoed off the walls of the West Henderson theater as the second period honors dance class performed a show based off the book Footloose by Kenny Loggins on Monday, Oct. 29.

Elementary schools in the area were invited to send their kindergarten classes to see the performance because Footloose was entirely performed in animal costumes.

“It is really fun to have a younger audience because they are so cute and laugh at everything,” junior Erin Raxter said.

Raxter portrayed the parts of a monkey and lemur in the show. Senior Travis Pressley held the main role of Zookeeper Jack. Other roles included ducks, llamas, kangaroos, wolves and more, all based off the book with the goal of entertainment.

“We were supposed to make our dances and parts to annoy Travis [Pressley] and everything we did was supposed to make the kids laugh,” Raxter said.

In order to be able to put on the show, the students worked during the first nine weeks of school to choreograph the dances themselves.

“Our teacher gave us the amount of 8-counts that we needed to make up and then we had to use our own knowledge about dance to come up with what would go best with the music,” junior Samantha Rulli said. “We also had to keep what the kids would think is funny in mind.”

After the performance was finished, the dancers held their curtain call and took their bows. They formed a line to help the kindergarteners get back onto their buses, and received many high-fives. Many kindergarten classes took pictures with the dancers.

“They look up at us as high schoolers and we look so big,” Rulli said. “They still think [dancing is] funny so it is a cool experience.”

By: Lawrence Whittington, Feature Writer, and Avery Dull, Staff Writer