photo by: Contributed

Cordley Elementary students ‘danced the night away’ on stage at the 2024 Lights On! event, where they performed to a medley of two iconic pop stars, Jennifer Lopez and Will Smith.

Cordley Elementary students took home first-place honors at the 2024 Lights On! event, where they performed a dance medley to Jennifer Lopez and Will Smith hits.

“In My Y2K Era” was the theme of this year’s edition of the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence’s annual dance competition, featuring some of the top artists from 1995 to 2005.

The event was Oct. 17 at Haskell Indian Nations University. Langston Hughes finished second with a performance to the Spice Girls and Simple Plan, and third place went to Hillcrest for their ‘N Sync and Brandy routine.

“I love dancing and empowering people, so it’s amazing seeing them up on the stage, happy as can be,” said Mackenzee Losure, a returning choreographer for Cordley, in a news release. “I’ve been a dancer my whole life, so it’s just so inspiring to see them loving something as much as I do.”

For the last several weeks, all 12 club sites — about 150 kids — have been putting together a dance routine to a mashup of hits by the artists they were assigned at random.

“I am so excited that in my first year here, we won,” said Abby Rumple, the unit director for Cordley, in the release.

Judges scored the dances in categories such as degree of difficulty, creativity, showmanship and choreography. The 2024 Lights On! judges were: Bart Littlejohn (mayor of Lawrence), Kate Lorenz (of the Lied Center), Frank Harwood (Kansas State Department of Education), Katie Lomshek (current Chiefs cheerleader), Wayne Ricks (active youth advocate), Cynthia Freeman (Avila University) and Christina Haswood (Kansas state representative).