On Saturday, Feb. 13, students arrived at Hogwarts where they experienced magic and wizardry at this year’s winter formal. Based on the bestselling novels by J.K. Rowling, the annual Winter Formal was hosted at the Fox Theater.
In comparison to homecoming and prom, the formal dance is the least attended and has even been cancelled in the past. However, this year’s dance held the record for highest formal attendance with 500 students, bypassing last year’s number of 400. “This was really a success because formal attendance has never passed more than 450 students,” says junior Courtney Anderson, who is head of the dance committee. In addition, the balanced ratio of underclassmen to upperclassmen was another success. Anderson continues, “A goal of ours is to make the underclassmen feel more part of the school. We want to make them feel welcome to everything and to not feel any pressure.”
To attract more and all students to attend the dance, the committee focused on advertising and spreading the word. Anderson says, “I think the turnout was much higher because of the new advertising. There were posters everywhere around school and we made sure that there was something to be seen about formal in every place that you looked in the hallway.”
Since leadership wanted to incorporate more activities and things to see besides dancing, they added tarot readings and played the movie on the dance floor in addition to the flipbooks from the previous winter formal. Freshman Alison Lee, who attended her first winter formal at Aragon, says, “The decorations and venue were nice, but the fact that the movie [Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire] was playing in the background was kind of weird since too many people were focused on it which was distracting from dancing.”
As every dance is for the student body, the dance committee is attentive on listening to feedback from the students via live announcements and Schoolloop. In response to complaints about the DJ at the previous homecoming, the dance committee created a song request form for students to fill out. However, sophomore Theresa Chen did not think that there was an improvement. Chen says, “The DJ wasn’t really good. He only played one slow song and it was the same one from last year. Also, there were some songs that many people didn’t even know.”
Freshman Grace Tsai decided not to go because of what she had heard about homecoming. Tsai says, “I heard that homecoming wasn’t that fun and a big part of it was because the DJ wasn’t really good. Also, since no one really dresses up for the theme, that aspect of the dance didn’t really interest me either.”
Since homecoming is a bigger dance with more going on, i.e. homecoming court, preparation for formal takes less time than the other dances. However, Anderson explains how both dances are devoted with equal attention. “Neither homecoming or formal is prioritized over one another. Both dances have the same amount of effort and love put into them.”
