What if I ain't no violinist?

71. Twoset Dancers II

A/N: This is a sequel to Twoset Dancers (Chapter 51) of this book.

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The next item on the workshop program was for each group of dancers to come up with thier own choreography and teach the other 2 groups how to dance their style and genre of dance. Each group had 30 minutes to put together their dance routine.

When the alarm set by John the facilitator went off after 30 minutes, he asked all the dancers to sit on one side of the dance hall and asked each dance style group to present their choreography to the rest of the dancers.

The classical ballet team, with Eddy as their group leader taking the centre, showcased their beautiful synchronisation, graceful movements, beautiful lines from head to toe and expressions by their hands.

The freaky movements of the hip-hop team, delivered by Brett and the other members of their group taking the centre in turns for their solos, were very entertaining, though Eddy thought he would never be able to learn to move like that. It was as if Brett and his team members were able to command their body parts to individually move in various directions against any sort of flow. For a ballet dancer, such a way of moving was terribly confusing.

The contemporary team also showed beautiful contrast between their strength and softness with their movements. The movements looked more "familiar" to Eddy compared to hip-hop, yet it had a much more "raw" and "edgy" power to it.

"Okay, so now I would like you all to make a group of 3, 1 from each genre so that you can teach each other your dance group's routine. Let's do the ballet routine first, we'll have a performance by each dance style group in 30 minutes."

Eddy from ballet, Brett from hip-hop and a girl who introduced herself as Brettany was a contemporary dancer who got together in a group.

"Hi, I'm Eddy. Brettany is it? Nice to meet you. This is Brett. Okay, so our ballet choreography starts from arms in 2nd position... Brett, we're starting with arms opened wide, parallel to the floor."

Brett found the movements were relatively straight forward but he felt like there was not a shred of grace in his movements. When dancing in his own genre, there'd be numerous moments when he would add some graceful movements as an embellishment – but these were for only for a few beats to emphasise the next "sick" movement that would follow just before where the "drop" of the music occurred and thus such poses were never "held" for a long duration of time. So comparing himself with Eddy in the studio mirror, Brett could not believe they were dancing the same routine.

"Eddy... why do I look like a cockroach scuttling across the floor, rather than someone dancing ballet ?"

Eddy looked absolutely mortified with Brett's question.

"Aaaagh, Brett, please don't say that!!"

Brett raised an eyebrow.

"Why..??"

"I just can't stand... those insects. Anyway, look, we're bound to look different when we dance simply because you're not a ballet dancer.. But that's okay, I saw your dance routine and it looked amazing. I'm scared of learning it."

"Hmm"

"Okay, so some tips. I do think you can make your movements bigger with larger steps, plus, show me your arms in 2nd position again? Yeah, spread out like that. Can you make them wider? Can you push out your chest as you hold your arms out so that your arms look longer? "