It’s always great to see young people getting onstage and performing at their school talent shows, whether they’re singing, dancing, or demonstrating the abilities they have elsewhere. And while every entrant into such events will likely deserve a round of applause just for getting up in front of their peers and doing their best, every so often you will catch a performance that blows you away, in that it demonstrates originality far beyond the years of the entrants.
One such performance was given by four fifth-grade boys back in 2017, who took part in the Elementary Talent Show at New Braunfels Christian Academy in Texas. The students began with a black cloth over them to keep their performance secret until the last minute. When the cloth was removed, it was revealed that the boys were all dressed in baby costumes with tiny false legs that they could control with their arms. The audience immediately burst into laughter – but this was just the beginning.
What happened next went down even better with the audience, with the boys using the suits to dance to various well-known songs in imaginative and hilarious ways. The first track played was Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off’, with the boys miming to the words and shaking along to the chorus. Perhaps the most popular song choice, however, was Carl Douglas’s ‘Kung Fu Fighting’, with applause and cheers coming from the audience as the four performers showed off their kung-fu moves in their suits.
Of course, this cheeky foursome isn’t the only group of students to have brought riotous laughter to their schools at a talent show, with eight fifth graders doing just that at Porter Elementary back in 2014. Using a sheet of blue plastic as a pool, the students pretended to be synchronized swimmers, performing a routine to classical music as though they were actually swimming. The audience clearly loved it, and the eight students received some well-deserved cheers and applause when they had finished.
Both of these videos – which together have been watched by over 30 million people – show the abundance of talent and imagination that can be seen at school shows such as these. Keeping an audience entertained for even five minutes is not an easy thing to do, and it’s certainly not something that everyone is capable of, but these youngsters managed it with ease.
