Flashdance brings Trafford Centre to a standstill

STUNNED shoppers at the Trafford Centre were brought to a standstill as hundreds of students staged the shopping city’s first ever ‘flashdance’.

More than 400 young dancers from Salford City College performed the surprise routine to a medley of classic songs as unsuspecting customers looked on.

Flashdance – a stunt made famous by a recent mobile phone companies advertising campaign - involves people assembling suddenly in a public place to run through a choreographed dance and dispersing instantly.

The Salford students spent months rehearsing their routine, including a midnight rehearsal at the Trafford Centre after it had closed.

The scheme was dreamed up by Hannah Plaice, the college’s dance tutor, after the Salford riots last year. She thought that media coverage had given youngsters in Salford a bad image and was determined to show them in a better light.

Hannah said: “I was watching the news at the time of the riots and saw that people were saying youngsters from Salford were causing all sorts of trouble, I was thinking about the kids I taught and thinking that they weren’t like that at all.”

The four minute dance routine – which included hits such as MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This and Outkast’s Hey Ya – took place in the retail centre’s food court The Orient on Thursday.

Justin Webb, PR and Media manager for the Trafford Centre said that he was ecstatic about how the event had gone and that the centre always tried to play an active role in the community. 

By Alex Hibbert