Woodrow Wilson High School. Photo by Renee Umsted.
Editor’s note (3 p.m.): A quote from dance instructor Marissa Marez has been added.
Woodrow Wilson High School’s dance department will perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“The dancers will be exposed to professional dance when they attend master classes as they prepare for the parade performance,” Marissa Marez, a dance instructor at the school, said in a statement. “Students will also experience NYC for a week where they will see several Broadway musicals, a Radio City Music Hall performance and other national monumental sites.”
The school is asking for donations through the booster club to help cover the cost of travel to New York City for the annual parade, the school’s dance department wrote in a Facebook post May 11.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for our dancers, and we need all of the community support we can get,” the post said.
East Dallas has sent people to the parade before; in 2019, a few cheerleaders from Bryan Adams High School were invited to march.
The first Macy’s parade was held in 1924. About 10,000 people watched what was then called the Macy’s Christmas Parade, with bands, animals from the Central Park Zoo and floats featuring nursery rhyme characters.
It was renamed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a few years later, and balloons replaced live animals.
The parade was canceled during World War II, according to USA Today. In 2020, it lacked a live audience.
Television has brought the parade into homes across the country since the 1940s, but the first broadcast of the parade was done through radio, in 1934, according to CNN.
The 97th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is scheduled for Nov. 23.
