CELEBRATING 10 years to the day it first opened, an Andover theatre threw a special evening event at the weekend.

The Lights held a gala night for friends, customers, suppliers and supporters on Saturday.

More than 200 people dressed up in black tie and posh frocks and danced the night away to the music of local singers, Jayne Deer and Jake Ward, in celebration of The Lights’ tenth anniversary.

Leader of the council, Councillor Ian Carr and venue director, Heather Whittam, both gave speeches and there was a montage of photographs from the last 10 years featuring staff, customers and volunteers.

Cllr Carr said: “I think it was a really good evening, a lot of people seemed to enjoy it, it was a good thing to celebrate the tenth anniversary of The Lights.

“I think it’s fantastic, it’s been really successful, one of the most successful theatres around because of occupancy figures are about 70 to 80 per cent month on month, and that’s very high for a theatre of its size. And we’re due our millionth customer next year.”

Earlier in the week, as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations the venue played host to internationally acclaimed Stopgap Dance Company who performed a bespoke dance piece with schools Icknield and The Wellington Academy, based on the Moon Language that appears around the venue.

The Moon Language project took place when the venue first opened and was led by artist Caroline Cardus with support from Enham residents.

The Stopgap dance performance took inspiration from this to create a piece with local school children that explored how we use our senses.

The project was supported by funding from The Arts Council.

The Light Wall has also been a feature at the venue since the beginning, and was designed by local school children and installed with the help of local company Lee Filters.

In the spirit of the venue’s anniversary, there are now ten new light windows featuring different style number tens.

And Andover now has its very own walk of fame, Hollywood-style, with gold stars featuring some of The Lights’ most illustrious acts from the past decade.