Darwen dancers set for TV stardom

Cheer Valley senior street cheer team is rated the best in the country at the new high-octane craze which mixes elements of street dance and cheer leading.

Now they will celebrate by being the main guests on the new Channel 4 5 O’Clock Show, currently presented by Peter Andre.

The six lads and six girls aged between 13 and 22 will be demonstrating their routine and then chatting to the host about their success in the new sport.

Coach Sarah Williams, 27, said: “It’s a new craze across the UK that mixes the disciplines of street dance with cheerleading.

“The girls have to have pompoms and there must be some cheering, but there’s also hip hop dancing moves, flips and acrobatics to songs currently in the charts.”

She added: “At the moment it’s becoming very popular because of the dance teams on TV talent shows and the film StreetDance 3D which has just been released.”

The team had a ‘mock interview’ for the show and are set to pre-record a routine. The Cheer Valley street cheer team are part of a larger Cheer Valley set-up based in Hollins Grove Mill, Hollins Grove Street, where 120 people from the age of three to adults train in a range of dancing disciplines.

The street cheer team won their title at a competition in Stoke last year, pitted against 16 national outfits.

It’s a far cry from last year when Sarah blasted Simon Cowell for 10 minutes after he branded her cheerleaders ‘terrible’ on Britain’s Got Talent.

Thirty-eight members of the squad performed a two-minute up-tempo routine in front of the judges for a chance of performing at the Royal Variety Performance in front of the royal family.

Sarah said: “That is behind us. We’ve been going from strength to strength. It’s spurred us on.”

And at a recent competition at Blackpool’s Winter Garden’s, the wider team of six cheer teams and four dance teams took 15 trophies – 11 of them first places.

Sarah said: “It’s an outstanding achievement for the team, and I’m very proud of them all."