Bella Danza | #Wattys2015

S i x

*edited*

S i x   💃 September 5th

Quite obviously, after getting the acceptance email from American Encore on August 20th, Thomas and I immediately sent out a confirmation notice to American Encore and then worked harder than ever to get our dance finished up.

   We performed it for all of our classes for feedback, and they all loved it and swore that they would be voting and praying that we won Sectionals. I had no doubt that they would stay true to their words, either, and Thomas and I thanked them for their kind words.

   There were some rather difficult moves within our dance that we had to constantly work on to improve, but we managed to get all of them down and now our dance was ready to be on TV and performed in front of all the judges of American Encore's National Fine Dance Competition.
   I was beyond excited.

   American Encore had already announced who all would be in the NFDC, and Thomas and I had had to send in professionally taken photographs of ourselves for reference. We couldn't go back anymore. We had no choice but to perform in the NFDC now, and I wasn't quite sure if this freaked me out more or excited me more.

   We met up every day at seven in the morning at the dance studio, and, if I didn't have to work too late, we met up after I got out of Rizzo's as well so we could constantly work on the performance.
   It took basically all of our time to accomplish getting our jive dance routine down while also working on other dance classes' routines.

   It took a lot out of both of us, but it was completely worth it.

   Elisabeth, the blonde receptionist at the dance studio, was nice enough to video our dance so we could watch it and make pointers on what looked too jerky or what didn't fit very well into our "first date" theme.

  Thomas had sent the videos taken of us doing the dance to someone (he wouldn't tell me whom) who wrote back to us quickly after watching it saying that he/she liked the routine and the song choice but that we needed to work on a lot of our fast jive movements and kicks so they weren't so spasmodic and un-put together.

   We took heed to the advice and now, after Thomas had sent the newest video of us to this person, he/she said that our dance was "extraordinarily good" and ready to be seen by the American Encore judges.

   My stomach had tingled at those words.

   We were ready.

   Our dance was ready.

   Soon, we would be performing in front of thousands of people and we would either make it into Regionals or lose Sectionals. I was frightened by the prospect, but I was also strangely ecstatic about it.

   It had been sixteen days since Thomas and I had seen the email from American Encore, and it was now September 5th, a Sunday. As per usual, I went to the dance studio early in the morning at our meeting time.

   Usually, there were quite a bit of people working on Sundays to catch up on missed work. But today no one seemed to be working anywhere in the dance studio. It was dead silent. That was weird, but I ignored it and went down the hall to Thomas' classroom.

   He wasn't there.

   Now I was kind of panicking and wondering where the hell everyone was. I left Thomas' dance classroom and began searching all over the dance studio for someone who could tell me just what the hell was going on. It wasn't like Thomas to be missing like this.