Dance show rescheduled after riot cancellation

Parents and pupils have been raising funds to reschedule the cancelled performance

A dance performance which was cancelled due to riots has cost about £10,000 to reschedule.

SCDC Dance School had been due to perform at the Regent Theatre in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, on 3 August.

Hundreds of people protesting in the city in reaction to the death of three girls in Southport meant the show had to be cancelled.

About 250 pupils were locked inside the theatre’s auditorium while protestors gathered outside.

Pupils had spent eight months preparing for the dance show, the dance school’s owner Katie Tonkin Beardmore said.

“It was really scary when you think about it,” she said.

“Outside of that building was an angry mob, coming to meet another mob – at the end of the day, fighting for something that should have been a protest for a dance school, for the children that were hurt, was just turned into a brawl.”

Katie Tonkin Beardmore said the show would go on, despite the actions of protestors

Parents and pupils organised a sponsored walk and other fundraising events to help raise the money needed to put the show on again.

“There are lighting and sound costs and then there are the niggly little bits that you don’t think about, which are like the front of house things that you have to pay for,” Ms Tonkin Beardmore said.

It had always been her dream to put on a show at the Regent Theatre, she added.

She said despite the actions of protestors, the show would go on, and would take to the stage on 31 August.

The theatre said it was keeping return costs to a minimum to help the dance school.