Youth raise their voices

Approximately 4,000 young men and women from across Weber County will crowd Weber State University’s Stewart Stadium to perform in Youth Spectacular on July 16-17. The youth range from 14-18 years old from 30 stakes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have been divided into three councils: west, north and south.

“The West Council is ‘earth life,’ so they’re doing pioneers, the ’20s, ’50s and hip-hop,” said North Council choreographer Melanie Cevering. “The South Council is doing countries. They’re doing South African dancing, Indian dancing, cowboy dancing and Polynesian dancing. Then ours is mostly life in heaven and coming to earth.”

The theme of this event is “Arise and Shine Forth,” and many of the performers said they feel it is an encouragement to be better people. 

“It talks about when you were in heaven, then you come here and you need to be good,” said 15-year-old Morgan Durbano. “You have to find and remember who you are and try not to get lost along the way.”   

WSU students who attend the Ogden LDS Institute of Religion will also play a part in the upcoming performance.

“We’re kind of like the pre-show,” said sophomore Melinda Martin. “We have our own songs that we sing before the show, then we sing songs in between each council. We’re also a part of the finale at the end.”

Another Institute student, Wade Ellis, said his favorite part of the show is the finale.

“We’re all together, singing and dancing, and it’s kind of cool to see everybody on the field at once,” Ellis said. “It’s really a lot of fun.”

Durbano said she likes the mixture of the upbeat and spiritual songs throughout the show.

“I like ‘Keepers of the Light’ because it has a good message and is a more spiritual song,” she said. “In the second act, they sing a High School Musical song, which is more fun. It’s cool.”

With all the people involved in this performance, a lot of preparation was required.

“We’ve practiced an hour and a half once a month since January,” Cevering said. “We added some extra practices for the tumblers and hip-hop dancers. Then we have all these combined rehearsals, so we’ve had a good 30 hours of practices.”

Sewing about 4,000 costumes has also been time-consuming.

“They have pioneer costumes and angel costumes for our council,” Cevering said. “The others have ’50s dresses, poodle dresses, and flapper dresses for the ’20s. Then the South Council has dresses in the attire like cowboy costumes and the skirts from Australia.”

Over 100 adult leaders were needed to organize this performance.

“Every council has two directors, a choreographer, a music person, a costume person, a props person and a logistics person,” Cevering said. “Then, under them, every stake has those same things and some wards help sew costumes and other things like that.”

The time it takes to put on a show with so many performers involved hasn’t been the most challenging part, however, according to Cevering.

“It’s hard to get all the kids to quiet down,” she said. “They have so much fun talking to their friends and they’ve made friends across the board. Plus, these kids have such busy lives with school and sports and it’s just hard to get them to every rehearsal. That’s probably been our biggest struggle, actually.”   

The Youth Spectacular is at 7:30 p.m. and will last about two hours. Tickets are free and can be obtained from the LDS church.