A Loughborough College audience has been taken on an uplifting journey through a globe-trotting performance created by students with a range of physical and learning needs.
‘Boogie Travels’ was a celebration of music and dance from across the world, including the United States, China, India - and beyond it, with a sequence set in outer space. There was even a ‘commercial break’ with spoof adverts filmed by the students across the College.
Seventeen students from the Transitions programme at Loughboorugh College ranging in age from 16 to early 30s took a year to develop the performance, with the support of lecturers and joint directors Vicki Calvert-Gooch and Colin Power.
“We ran filmed scenes in a mock travel agent on a screen above the stage with different groups of students asking for a variety of holidays – which were the cues, whether that was for a Bollywood number, line dancing in cowboy hats or Space Oddity. The students also did a brilliant filmed recreation of the Daz doorstep challenge, asking people across the College, How white are your whites? That got lots of laughs from the audience,” said performing arts lecturer Vicki.
“One of the most powerful moments was when the cast performed Reflection from Mulan, which they also signed in Makaton, with its lyrics ‘When will my reflection show who I am inside.’
“It is brilliant to see students who can be very quiet and withdrawn in class transformed through music, dance and movement. The theatre was packed but they weren’t phased and it was brilliant to see them all having so much fun.
“The learning support staff were on stage too, helping the students throughout their performance. They were amazing. And amongst the audience were our performing arts students, whooping the cast along at every turn. There is a great bond between these groups of students, they watch each other’s performances and really support each other.
“This really was a moving and uplifting performance and it was wonderful that the cast was given a full standing ovation at the end.”