photo by: Jeff Burkhead

The Cordley Elementary School Boys & Girls Club site performs during the 2021 edition of the "Lights On!" dance competition.

This Friday, kids from across Lawrence will be busting out their best moves to the soundtracks of more than a dozen movies, including “Footloose” and “School of Rock.”

More than 200 of the kids could be competing in Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence’s “Lights On!” dance competition. The event is set for 7 p.m. Friday at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School and will feature performers from all 14 Boys & Girls Club sites across Lawrence.

“It’s a pretty time-honored tradition,” the Boys & Girls Club’s director of marketing and communications, Alissa Bourneuf, told the Journal-World.

Bourneuf said this year’s “Lights On!” wouldn’t see any big changes other than a slight rebrand that drops “Talent Show” from its title, which is to reflect that the event is a dance competition rather than a traditional talent show. The event has been an annual affair in Lawrence for more than a decade, save for a year off because of the coronavirus pandemic, and it was first launched on a nationwide scale back in 2000.

photo by: Jeff Burkhead

Deerfield Elementary Boys & Girls Club won the 2021 “Lights On!” competition.

But just because it’s been around for a while doesn’t mean there’s any less excitement from Boys & Girls Club leaders, Bourneuf said.

“… Courage has a lot to do with it,” Bourneuf said. “You have to have some bravery and confidence to get up on stage and remember a dance and have 500-some people watching you and try to remember all your dance moves and you’re up there with your team. I just think it’s a whole new level of teamwork and believing in yourself that is such a fun thing to witness.”

Bourneuf said there’s likely to be a sizable audience watching those performances. Each site team can have 15 members maximum. If those teams all have a full roster, she said even just accounting for parents, guardians and immediate family members in the audience makes for a large crowd.

Bourneuf said there’s typically a recommendation that participants be somewhere between third and fifth grade, since the event can be a bit daunting for younger kids. Inevitably, though, there are a few kindergarten and first grade students who participate. At the upper end of the spectrum, teenage participants from Boys & Girls Club’s Center for Great Futures make up one of the 14 site teams, Bourneuf said, and typically range from sixth grade to sophomores in high school.

The event is free, and Bourneuf said doors open at 6:30 p.m. She also encouraged folks who want to attend to plan on arriving early, in case they need to park farther away from LMCMS.