A CROSSGATES dance school has taken centre stage in New York.

Kids from Centre Stage Performing Arts jetted off in July to take a bite of the Big Apple, where they watched the iconic Lion King musical on Broadway, took to the stage at the famous Minskoff Theatre, met a High School Musical legend and stopped traffic in Times Square as they performed a flash mob for New Yorkers.

A trip of a lifetime, the 23 lucky dancers were living a “dream” according to Louise Ferrier, the founder of Centre Stage.

She told the Times: “It really was a dream. There was a lot of prep going into it and it was postponed a year due to COVID so it was kind of a long time coming.”

Within their first 24 hours, the young performers had already seen and been in a Broadway show.

Over the next few days, they took part in multiple workshops with Corbin Bleu, known for his role as Chad Danforth in the Disney Original Movie, High School Musical, and performed in Times Square before finishing off the trip with a riverboat party up the Hudson.

Louise continued: “They shut down Times Square, they flashmobbed Times Square with Corbin Bleu and that was electric!

“New York is the dance capital of the world so they were just in absolute shock.

“I think it didn’t really sink in with them until they came home and watched the videos and the pictures back.

“It concluded with a boat trip up the Hudson, it was a disco boat so we had some nice food and then we sort of partied away under the lights of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

“Literally, it was like something out of a movie.”

Dance mums raised almost £25,000 for the trip, and the celebrations weren’t over when they came home, as they also threw a party for the 10th anniversary of Centre Stage in August.

Now their sights are already set on next year with more globetrotting planned.

Louise said: “Each of our teams will be looking forward to where they’re going next.

“We have a younger team now who are looking to go to Disneyland Paris and our older team will be looking to go to the west side of America – Hollywood and LA.”