A Hidden Treat in Each Song
Blog by GHMF Choreographer David P.
Each of us on the choreography team has our own unique style in how we program the fountain to dance. This diversity adds a great amount of variety to the audience and also creates a fun game we choreographers like to play called "Guess the Choreographer" to identify which one of our peers did this song based on its choreography style. For songs that I do, there is a second game called "Find the Easter Egg". In the era of computers, an Easter Egg refers to something that is intentionally included but not documented, giving the user a pleasant surprise when it is uncovered.
The easter eggs I place into my choreography somehow relate to the song's title, its lyrics or the artist/group the sings the song. As of this writing (near Thanksgiving 2025), I have choreographed 17 songs over two seasons and many of them contain some kind of easter egg. As not to ruin the surprise entirely, I am not going to disclose every Easter Egg but here are some of the most notable:
Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America" is the first song I ever choreographed. There is the lyric "School Bus Driver". If you watch closely, the fountain turns yellow at this point with the exception of two red lights which flash alternately."
Stop In The Name of Love" by the Supremes uses colors associated with Valentine's Day (a big holiday for love): red, pink, purple and white.
Michael Jackson's "Bad" features a fountain version of the Moonwalk dance."
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper uses colors that closely resemble the various colors Cyndi dyed her hair over her 50 year music career.
Gloria Estefan's "Conga" primarily uses colors associated with a fiesta (or approximations thereof due to a limited choice of colors the lights could display at the time) and also contains a fountain version of a conga line.
"Everything is Awesome" from The Lego Movie is primarily choreographed in Blue, Red, White and Yellow. These four colors (along with Black) were the first color Lego bricks were available in.
"YMCA" by the Village People contains several Easter Eggs. The main colors of this song were inspired by the band members: Police Officer (blue), Native American (red), Cowboy (white for a cowboy hat), Construction worker (yellow hard hat), biker (orange for Harley Davidson motorcycles), soldier (army green). In addition, when the band spells out YMCA with their arms, the fountain does too but in Morse Code! This idea came from the fact that one of my other hobbies is amateur ("ham") radio, where some hams are very much into Morse Code.
The theme from 2001 A Space Odyssey (officially entitled "Also sprach Zarathustra") was used as the fountain's startup song for most of the first fifty years. As such, this song functions like a time machine in how it plays. As the song begins, the choreography recreates how the fountain used to look in terms of what water features existed, and what color of lights were available. As the song progresses, the various features and upgrades that have taken place over the year begin to be used. The song ends with the Voice Spout reaching upwards while illuminated in Magenta. This pays homage to the late Ron Hartsema whose voice would then boom from the loud speakers with "Good Evening and Welcome. I am the Grand Haven Musical Fountain".
As I head into my third season, the Easter Eggs will continue. While it began as a way of dealing with "choreographer's block," it is now part of my signature style and a great source of "did you see that?" conversations. And with several changes taking place between the 2025 and 2026 seasons both up on Dewey Hill and with the software we use to program the fountain, there will be an ever wider variety of Easter Eggs for me to hide and you to find!
Have you noticed any of my Easter Eggs in the listed songs?