WHSTE had their first performance of this year’s musical “Footloose” yesterday. Preparation for the musical included creating the choreography and designing the costumes for the musical.

According to Richard Weingartner, the director of the musical, the choreographer created the dances according to the themes of the story.

“Our choreographer comes in and starts using dance as a way to tell the story, looking at what causes a character to be so excited that they get up and dance to what causes a character to be so excited that the spoken word can’t contain their energy,” Weingartner said. “The words inside the song themselves are really the internal thoughts of the characters.”

Another important aspect of the production are the costumes. The head costumer and the actors think about what outfits and what styles the characters would wear.

“[The actors] always have thoughts about their characters’ costumes and style which can be really helpful when I’m thinking about how all the costumes fit together on stage,” sophomore Clare Lippincott, the head costumer for the musical said.

According to Lippincott, all of the actors brought in a few pieces of their own clothing to be put into costumes. These articles of clothing were put together to make costumes.

“Everyone’s been working for a really long time, and all the pieces have been brought together,” Lippincott said. “It looks really good, everyone’s doing their part well.”

When speaking about preparing the musical, Weingartner compared the preparation to putting together a puzzle.

“The pieces to the puzzle are very shadowy sometimes, and then eventually you add everything. You add all these different pieces to it. You add the color, and you add the light, the sound, the physicality and the music of course,” Weingartner said.