Matt loved dancing. He began to love it when he was two-three years old. Initially, he would look up videos on different types of dance and would learn dance moves rapidly. He learnt complementary dance when he was 4. He got into urban dance when he was 5. Since the age of 6, he created dance routines and did dance performances. In primary school, Matt performed in several assemblies. In primary 5 and 6, he won the school talent show with his beautiful dancing. At age 11, he traveled to different countries to do dance performances to gigantic groups of audiences; England, America, Australia, China, Canada, India and even Hawaii.
Every Wednesday after school, Matt goes to dance class. His teacher was Ms. Mason and she was doing the attendance for the class.
"Let's do the attendance to see who is here today," Ms. Mason announced. "Chloe, Hannah, Harriet, April, Nina and last but not the least...Matt!"
Outside the dance room, there were four boys giggling and pointing out from behind: Toby, Jack, James and Olivier. They were giggling at Matt because he was the only boy in the dance class.
"Matt is dancing with the girls, Matt is dancing with girls..." The childish boys continually chanted in sync.
Matt pretended that he did not care, but deep inside he did. He wished that there were some boys in the dance class too.
"Today is our final rehearsal as our performance will be on Friday." Ms. Mason barked to the class. "So I hope you all remembered the routine off by heart and it needs to be perfect with no mistakes. NOT ONE."
Ms. Mason was a harsh dance teacher as she loves things to be done with perfection.
Before that, she began to do a warm up with the students stretching their arms, legs, balancing and jumping. Next, they began the routine. Ms. Mason played the piano music. Just before they finished, Matt performed his solo and the routine was a success.
"Impressive everyone," Ms. Mason beamed. "I cannot be more than ever proud. I'm sure you guys will rock on stage and hearing the clapping from the audience members!"
On Friday during assembly, Mrs. Andrews the headmistress went on stage to announce something:
"Good morning everyone, we have a very exciting performance during our assembly today. We have a special guest: Bryan Taylor who used to be a student in the school and who just graduated from uni. He has kindly took off his time to do a complementary dance routine for us. But, before that we have Ms. Mason and her dance class that have been working incredibly hard with their routine practicing for twelve weeks. Lets give our full attention and respect to our lovely dancers..."
As the audience were clapping, the dancers gracefully walked up to the stage on their starting positions and began to dance.
Nearly the end of the performance, Matt was doing his solo. Finally he finished and now the class began to bow while they all had a standing ovation from the front row to the back row of the audience. Bryan Taylor went on stage to commend the dancers for an excellent performance. In particular, he commended Matt.
"Young Man! That was cool! The star of the show. You were brilliant!" Bryan said happily giving him a hi-5, "what is your name?"
Matt hesitated.
"Matt..." He chuckled nervously, "are you saying this for real?"
"Of course!" Bryan proudly spoke. "Well Matt, since I was a little boy I loved dancing and my teacher used to say: 'Boys who dance are cool.'"
In the audience Toby, Jack, James and Olivier thought that Matt was cool.
After the assembly, dance classes with Ms. Mason resumed again.
She took the attendance: "Chloe, Hannah, Harriet, April, Nina and last but not the least.....Matt, Toby, Jack, James and Olivier!"
Matt was no longer unhappy in dance class because there were boys who joined in too.
Moral: Trust your instincts and don't let yourself down by other people's comments.