BUBBLE POPPER

DANCE COMPETITION pt1

Mrs Barlowe hails after suddenly appearing backstage.

"YEAH!"

All 9 yell.

Everyone falls silent and Mrs Barlowe glares at me, waiting for me to say something. I glare back at her and we have a 15 second staring contest before I cave.

"Fine. Yeeeaah..."

"Come on Sarah, aren't you excited?"

"Yeah Hope, I am... on the inside. Trust me, it's just cartwheels and other things people do when they're excited in my head right now."

Hope starts to laugh but Audrey shoots her a disapproving glare which shuts her mouth. The music from the ongoing performance stops and the crowd roar's loud enough to be heard from here. The MC voice replaces the music and confirms the end of the performance.

"That was a lovely and lively performance by Amton High's Ice Breakers, right?"

He starts, causing the crown to roar once more.

"That'll be hard to top. But, I have a feeling the school up next is definitely up for the challenge. Please welcome, the kings and queens of highschool dance, the smoothest criminals around, the biggest cats in our dance jungle! The all star competition's reigning champs; BrightView High's Royalty dance crew!!"

Yes... that really is the name of our dance crew.

The crowd's cheers are even more deafening than before. Our school is pretty famous in the dance scene, all thanks to Mrs Barlowe. We've won overall best crew five years in a row, and last year, we placed first in every category we participated in.

Immediately the stage lights go out, we run up onto the stage and stand in the zigzag formation we rehearsed; the guys in the front and girls in the back. Once the crowd's cheers die out, leaving the room dead silent, the music starts and individual spotlights shine on the five boys in front as they breakdance in unison to the first half verse of teeth by 5SOS. Our cue to start is when they remain in a gentleman's 'may i have this dance' pause facing their right. We catwalk to the beat of the second half verse and fill the spaces between the guys in complete sync, taking each of us exactly eight steps to stand to by our individual partners, then we do more of a contemporary dance to the rest of the verse. We cue the guys back into the dance by taking their hands and we all enter ballroom duet dance stances in slow motion during the pre chorus before drastically increasing the tempo of our dance to match the tempo of the chorus by falling back quickly and dramatically, trusting the guys to catch us by our arms, pull us back up then twirl us into a back hug. We {the girls} break from it by spreading out our arms and taking a step forward then we all {girls and boys} do a collapse move before quickly rising with the song {like air dancers}. The guys stay still after and the girls turn to face them on the high note. The rest of the dance is similar but more chaotic. We practiced the moves so fiercely they became second nature and our synchronization perfect. You'd think were edited clones of the same two people, considering all the girls have the same red bucket hats white shirts and read pants and the boys have the same white caps red shirts and white pants; we're also all wearing black Nikes.

___

After 6 minutes of dancing, we finally get into formation for the last dance; A single horizontal line at the front of the stage, as we wait for the final song to play in the mix. The crowd's cheers have been loud and piercing, but now they've fallen silent once again as we stand absolutely still waiting for the next song to start but the cheer sounded once more as soon as the intro to Light it up by Major Lazer began to play. Our moves are simple but require a certain level of fluidity to make them look cool which is hard to achieve but easy once mastered. Like the rest of the dance, the movements are second nature to us. Tess Ryan and Eliana exit from the right with Zac, Hope and Ezra exit from the right during the chorus leaving Mike, Audrey, Oscar and I to do what Mrs Barlowe likes to call the 'mic drop finish'. We dance Fuse ODGs part until the countdown, which is when we get into formation; Mike and Oscar backflip closer to the exit and Audrey and I prepare ourselves for the next part. I can feel fear start to creep in as I think of all the ways this could go wrong but instead of letting it take over, I fuse myself with the music, breathe in deeply with my eyes closed and open slowly as I exhale calmly. The song stops cuing Audrey and I in. We simultaneously perform a roundoff and smoothly transition into cartwheels before performing synchronized aerial cartwheels and finally allowing Oscar to catch me and Mike to catch Audrey both in catch lift for a second before they turn and set us down just as the beat of the second chorus drops sending the crowd into chaos. The four all exit nonchalantly; Oscar and I from the left exit, Mike and Audrey from the right.