Singers and dancers ruled the night October 18 at the inaugural Franklin’s Got Talent: Youth Edition variety show held at Franklin Middle School’s Sampson G. Smith campus.

The stars of the show were Franklin students from all schools in the township: the traditional township schools, plus Central Jersey College Prep Charter School, Thomas Edison EnergySmart Charter School and Cedar Hill Prep.

The evening was a fundraiser for the township’s Cultural Arts Council.

Terri Seggio, who for decades ran the theater program at Sampson until her retirement, returned as a the chairperson of the Arts Council to organize the show.

“This is our last event of the year,” she said. “We’re hoping to highlight all of the students in our district.”

Seggio said the event was designed to raise money to be able to offer more events next year.

“We’re really hoping that the money that we get this evening, we can then use in our upcoming year to sponsor our Black History Month, and we’re hoping to do a poetry event in April again,” she said. “And we’re hoping to do different cultural dance nights. Last year we did a salsa night. We’re doing line dancing.”

“So we’re hoping next year to bring in different cultures for different dance and band evenings,” Seggio said. “With the money we make tonight, we’ll help to fund those programs and keep them free. That’s the hope.”

“I told the children, service is the best thing you can do for your community,” she said. “And so they brought their talent and they brought their generosity of time. They’re performing this evening, so they’re giving back to their community and they’re helping the Council and we’re helping students to showcase their talent so it kind of works well for everybody.”

Seggio said she was inspired to do the show when she joined the Cultural Arts Council.

“I’ve done theater my whole life, and when I became chairperson of the council, you know, I brought my talent,” she said. “So I said to them, this is something that I could do, you know, I could direct a talent show, and my goal in my whole teaching career, for 35 years of teaching and 24 in the district, was to showcase kids.”

Seggio said the secret is to make the performers feel comfortable.

“Make them feel comfortable, make them feel confident, you know, show them that, they have unique talents within themselves,” she said.

The students who participated in the show and their performances were:

• Tony Holley-I’m Still Standing
• Hayleigh Docsol- Dance movie mix
• Isabella Marti-Perhaps
• Indigo James- Scars to Your Beautiful
• Vaishalina Mylappan-Ahyeon( Baby Monstor) Dangerously
• Bidi Bidi Bom Bom -Dance Group
• Ayran Sharma- Playing Keyboard
• Juliana Kraus-Dance Livingston
• Wayne Bullock-Greatest Show -Never Enough
• Nicholas Murillo- Queen Don’t Stop Me
• Apoorva Noopura- Track 4-Dance School. Dancers are Parvathy Regi, Kashviya Somangali, Sanjana Shekhar, Nia Raghu and Nila Jabamani.
• Deepika Sundaram-Dead Mom
• Isabela Rosas-Bird of a Feather
• Josh Robinson-Let it Go
• Duet, Ju’Maya Locke & Gabrielle Nesmith- Dance
• Giana Kraus- Dance Scars to Your Beautiful
• Ephraim Rikoto-JVKE Golden Hour
• Bryanna Fischer- Dance Queen Bee
• Noelle Tatum-Your Daddy’s Son

Here are some scenes from the evening: