The Pleasant View Senior Center Variety Show returns on Aug. 13 at 1 p.m.
Reminder Publishing file photo
EAST LONGMEADOW — East Longmeadow’s Pleasant View Senior Center is preparing to be the hotspot for all kinds of talents and performances, ranging from line-dancing, musical performances, stand-up comedy and story readings.
The senior center’s fourth annual talent show programming, rebranded this time around as its first variety show, returns on Aug. 13 at 1 p.m., 328 North Main St. Seating for the event opens up around 12:30 p.m.
The lineup is already fully booked with 10 acts and each act has around five minutes to perform, bringing the show’s length to around one hour.
Pleasant View Program and Volunteer Coordinator Alicia Mattsson-Bozé said the name change from talent to variety show came from conversations with other program coordinators who saw the benefit in differentiating the two events.
“It can take the edge off,” Mattsson-Bozé said. “Sometimes, people don’t feel like they have talents to share, but they want to do a reading or something. That is still a talent, just in their mind it’s not … There wasn’t as much pressure when it was called a variety show as when it was called a talent show. It was still so much fun and still the same outcome, just a little bit more of a relaxed feeling.”
Participants are mostly ages 60 and above, but anyone can sign up to perform. Around 100 audience members usually attend, and Mattsson-Bozé said one of the most fun parts of the event is seeing grandkids and families come and show support.
She also said a crowd favorite act is a line-dancing group that ends the show to “God Bless America.”
“That’s always been a fun tradition that we do,” Mattsson-Bozé said. “They invite everyone to stand up with them and do a little line-dancing. That’s how we’ve always ended the show and people live it. We have other bigger groups, like a tapping group who has been here every year and that’s been a favorite.”
Mattsson-Bozé said she has seen firsthand that the event allows people to come out of their shells and perform.
“We have some people who didn’t participate the first year, they just came to watch,” Mattsson-Bozé said. “After watching it for one or two years, they come up to me and say ‘hey, I think I want to try this’ and would then be a part of it. For me, it’s really neat to see people grow in that way and to just get the support from their friends and their peers, and to either learn that they have a talent they didn’t know they had, or to kind of re-realize that, ‘hey, I do have this talent and this gift that is important.’ It’s fun to just see people come out of their shell in that way.”
She said there is something beautiful about seeing the people she interacts with every day perform and share their gifts with friends and family.
More information on the senior center and it’s programming is posted at eastlongmeadowma.gov/223/Council-on-Aging or @PleasantViewSeniorCenter on Facebook.
