School dances are often looked forward to by many students, and the upcoming dance is no exception. Quartz Hill High School is preparing to host its annual Winter Ball, taking place at the Museum of Art and History in Lancaster on February 2. Tickets will be available starting January 19.

The Winter Ball this year, themed “Snowball,” is inspired by the school dance that occurs at the end of the second season of the show Stranger Things, an original show from Netflix. Taking place in the 80s, the show follows a group of friends as they figure out why their classmate, Will Byers, went missing, and the darkness behind its reasoning.

Released in 2016, the show has garnered a large amount of love and has created buzz amongst its viewers. It has won and been nominated for many awards already. With its immense popularity within teenagers, it is no surprise that it is the theme for this year’s winter dance.

Junior Charlotte Wenzel is one of the many students excited about the school dance because she is a fan of the show. She believes that, because of the show’s popularity, “plenty of people will want to attend.” She has seen a few posters around the school advertising the dance and is especially looking forward to the waffle bar, as she, herself, enjoys waffles.

She expects students to attend the dance dressed as the characters of the show, akin to cosplay. Moreover, she anticipates that the decorations for this year’s winter formal will be “awesome” with references to the show such as: “Christmas lights, eighties stuff, creepy upside-down trees, and maybe even some Demogorgons.” Since Wenzel is a fan of the show, she claims that this is the dance that she has been looking forward to the most since the start of her high school career.

Students who have not seen the show may feel left out or uninterested but might still attend, partly out of curiosity and partly because of peer pressure from friends who have seen the show and would like to participate in the annual school event.

School dances are a way to shed some enjoyment into the lengthy school year and to bring about school spirit, alongside the typical spirit week that precedes the day of the dance. This year’s theme is a clear attempt to target the large audience of the famous series, Stranger Things.