Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Holly’s mum was in tears watching the dance routine ...it was the first time she’d seen her daughter smile since the terrorist attack
Three weeks after the Manchester Arena bombing, schoolgirl dancers Dark Cloud were struggling to rehearse. One of their troupe, Hollie Booth, had been badly injured in the blast, which had killed her aunt.
The explosion had left Hollie with a broken right knee, left foot and leg, and she had suffered internal injuries and extensive nerve damage.
Her friends in Dark Cloud did not know if Hollie would ever be able to dance with them again, or if they would ever feel able to dance without her.
And then, during their rehearsal, Hollie came through the doors in her new wheelchair and asked to join in.
The girls immediately adapted their routine to accommodate Hollie’s wheelchair. As Hollie waved her hands in the air and shimmied her hips, she smiled for the first time since the bombing.
Choreographer Thea Boyle, who has been teaching the 11-strong troupe of 10 to 14-year-olds for six years, says: “I knew Hollie wanted to come back to see the girls, so we decided to surprise them.
“Hollie just turned up one day and sat in the middle of everyone. She seemed a bit dazed at first, but she came round and it was so lovely. As she learned a bit of the routine she was grinning from ear to ear and laughing. I sent a video of it to Hollie’s mum, who said she was crying watching it because that was the first time Hollie had smiled since the attack.”
From then on, Thea, 25, knew more needed to be done to help Hollie. The girls soon ditched Dark Cloud and adopted a new, inspirational name, RISE.
And after the incredible response to their BGT audition, the name has changed again, to Rise Unbroken. Astrid Jack, 11, explains: “We are trying to show we are rising up, coming out stronger.”
Thea says: “We want to show the world that Hollie and the girls are unbroken by past events. We will keep fighting. We will keep rising.”
After Hollie’s first day back, Thea appealed for wheelchair donations so that all of the group could dance the same routine with her.
The Red Cross was able to help and the girls perfected the routine which moved the BGT judges to tears. It was set to Ariana Grande’s One Last Time, the last song she performed at the Arena before 22-year-old suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated his device. Simon Cowell told the girls, who perform in T-shirts bearing the Manchester bee motif: “To get through what you went through and come here and turn a negative into a positive is incredible.”
Chatting to the girls as they rehearse at Hammersmith Apollo in London, ahead of tonight’s semi-final, Hollie, 13, says: “It meant a lot to hear that because we all put a lot of effort in.
“It was amazing for it to pay off. We all shed happy tears.”
Another dancer Lola Ibbotson, 13, says: “We all welled up, one by one.
“Once one of us cried, the next one cried, then the next one cried, then the next one cried.”
The girls are one member down when I meet them in London so, being from Manchester myself, I step in as the 11th dancer, with my own bee T-shirt, made by dancer Emma Whiteley’s mum. As they perform tricks and balances while