Flying (Fight Song Book 2)

Chapter 4: The First Day

Joe's PoV
I'm super excited to get going today. Alesha and I arrived early to start working on some choreography ideas, because with Nationals you gotta start preparing quickly. We'd decided to use the song Run Boy Run for our semi finals dance, which is what we're choreographing now.

"I think we should have some handstand lifts," Alesha says. "Maybe contortion handstands?"

"Yes, a wonderful idea," I agree. "We put those in our regionals dance last year and it's definitely what flipped us over the edge."

"Amy's turning section would be wonderful to have for those last thirty seconds," Alesha continues.

"Perks of having Amy, she can quite literally turn for England," I laugh.

Nationals for the UK was different to Nationals in most other countries. Usually you'd be put against everyone else in your country, but because of how small the countries in the UK were, Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England all competed together for that one spot as the UK team for Internationals. Each year there was a turning competition for bonus points for each country, and Amy always won for England. She could turn for ages, it was amazing.

"Add tutting too," I say. Everyone I knew in this team was good at tutting.

"Tumbling is a must, and we need parts in unison and parts in canon too," Alesha says.

"Yep," I respond.

"WE'RE BACKKKKK!" my sister comes rushing into the studio, doing a front aerial as she enters. Always had a flare for the dramatic, Zoe.

"Hey sis," I laugh. "Alesha and I are just coming up with ideas for the semi finals routine."

"Oooooh nice," Zoe grins.

Everyone else begins piling in soon, and I spot Dianne walk in with Lola. I'm so glad she's already made a friend and even more glad that she made the team. A lot of that was thanks to Lola, so I'm extremely grateful to the fourteen year old.

"Okay, listen up guys," Alesha smiles as we all sit on the floor in front of her. "Shirley will be late today, so she's given me instructions on what to do until then."

I might be dance captain, but that didn't mean I led everything. At the end of the day, I'm just another dancer. It's Alesha and Shirley who are in charge; I just help with choreography. So, I have absolutely no idea what the plan for today is.

"Learning choreo I assume?" Zoe spoke up.

"A bit, but that'll be in the later half of the session," Alesha responds.

It's Monday, which meant our main training started at 5:30pm and finished at 10pm or 10:30pm, depending on how long we needed, but sometimes the hours would be longer if it was the week of the competition. We train a lot.

Monday's started with an encouraged but optional 7-8am ballet class, although for the elite team it was basically 'if you don't attend you're not dedicated enough', so we all attended. Our elite squad classes then started at 5:30pm (although a lot of us often arrived at 5pm) and finished at 10-10:30pm. These consisted of a 1 hour street dance class, a 1 hour jazz class and then the rest was elite squad rehearsals for competition.

Tuesdays had another early ballet class (again, allegedly optional but really not). Then at 5pm-6pm we had a circus skills class, followed by a parkour class 6-7pm, then 1 hour latin and ballroom and three hour rehearsals, finishing at 11pm. Tuesdays were a long day.

Wednesdays we started with a pointe class at 7am-8am, but this was compulsory, not optional. We then had gymnastics and trampolining 4:30-7:30pm, followed by an hour break and then rehearsals until 10:30pm.