CandleLighters Dance Show ♡

Find Out My Day & Experience Of Street Performing For Charity ♡

On Saturday 22nd September, Me & my dance group travelled to Leeds to perform on the streets to support the CandleLighters charity.

I started the day by waking up and getting ready around 12:30. I plaited my hair to give it a nice neat look, I did my face and teeth and added a little bit of makeup just to cover up my spots and what not. As it hit 1pm we made a run for it to the car, and drove to Appley Bridge.

After a 10 minute car ride, we arrived at the train station- and I met up with the rest of my class. We made our way to the station to find out their was a Train Strike! Our teachers looking very shocked and annoyed, we decided to practice our performance on the pathway near the station. We set up the speaker and we started- having a lot of eyes looking our way. I was thinking "People must thing we are crazy!" as a small group of peoples looked over the wall to admire our dance.

The train started again at around two o' clock, we ran inside as soon as it stopped. We made it to Leeds Station at around 2:20, we all felt a little giddy and as there was quite a few of us, and were all very good friends, we all decided to link in a line and walk around Leeds & the station.. It was Chaos!!

When we got to the Leeds Station- we ran around the whole place trying to get to the ticket booth. We joined the line after following our teachers and got our return tickets to get back home. After traling around town, getting lost and waiting around- we met up with another one of our Dance mates and then joined up with us and we set off again to meet in the building.

We got to a tall, large building that contained many resturants and stores. A friend of my teacher- her name is Brianne- was on the top floor of the building, waiting for us so we took the lift up to the very top floor and went through the doors to get inside the room. She was on her laptop waiting for us to come inside, she looked up with a smile and rose from her desk. She greeted us and handed us some CandleLighter T-shirts to advertise the charity. We quickly slipped them on, tiying them to look like crop tops as they were way oversized!

Chatting and laughing for minutes, it was time for us to set off once again, we needed to take a group selfie before we left of, so my friend Lilly got her phone out and we snapped a few for our Instagrams and Facebook. The young lady wished us luck as we ran out giggling with excitment towards the exist doors.

Fast foward about half an hour of running through town, doging the passbyers, laughing as we talked, and also sprinting like the next Usain Bolt, we almost arrived at the final destination. As we walked by we noticed some crazy stalls and entertainments, theres always that one person in town doing those extreme fire and knife tricks on the streets. I alerted my friend Ellie and we all suddenly looked over to the huge crowd of people surrounding the fire-knife-extreme guy! We saw sweetcorn stalls, campaigns, singers and more as we walked through the town. But at last- we made it to our spot! A group of people wearing the same shirts as us were talking and looking at paper as we settled in. We had to get started as we were kinda late because of the train strike, but we were here!

We got into our places for our first dance, as we did three, and the music played- we began! Unfortunetly we don't have any videos a member of the team took a photo of us performing! (photo above)

While we were dancing, a few people came and donated into our Charity Bucket whilst other passerbyers recorded us. After about 20-30 minutes of performing we were all done, it seemed like we only did it for a minute!

When we finally finished it all up- we all agreed to go to McDonalds, but we needed to get to the train station first. Once again walking through a huge shopping centre followed by streets and roads we made it to the Leeds Station. Unluckily our Train stopped at were we left of to so we had to get to another one that was nearby. We took selfies on the train while sharing stories and moaning about school!

My mum met us at the McDonalds car park as we ordered our food to take home. I said goodbye to all my friends and my close friend Lilly was coming in my car with me so we can take her to her Aunts. I ate my meal in the car, just typing about it is making me hungry!, and while we were talking about our day, we dropped Lilly off at her Aunts house. She was trapped outside and was awkwardly standing their calling her Auntie as we burst out laughing. But she managed to get inside at the end.

Then I made it home and I wasn't very well! But im glad I was able to share my experience with you and hopefully I encoraged you to support charities because we have supported CandleLighters and also Martins House for a long time so it feels so good to be able to help those people in need with doing what we love!

Thank you for reading, I love you all so much! ♡

~ Sophie xo