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The Dance

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Submitted By rdnichols
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A Moment in Time As I stood there, I could feel the wet salty water running down my neck. This was sweat, it had been pouring out of my apertures since the song had started. The chorus was soon to be concluded; I was waiting for the fatal lyric that would tell me to begin. It felt like hours, but then at last it came; the thing I so eagerly awaited, "We will, we will rock you!" Finally it had come; at last the anxiety for the past two months was over. I was ready for it and so I sprang like a cheetah at his prey, and so it began. It had all started two months ago on a black dreary week. I had been having a horrendous day that Friday, but then it happened. We had been working on “We Will Rock You” that morning. As we progressed through learning all the steps, the pounding of the music came to the guitar solo. The choreographer stopped the music to ask me and Daniel Hinkson to do gymnastic tricks while the guitar solo came about. Speechless, as I was, is all that I can say to describe how I felt at that moment. Even though I was extremely flabbergasted, my mind was going five millions miles per hour thinking; What to do? How to do it? As I asked myself these questions, the plan came to my mind of presenting the front flip for everyone to gasp over. I came to Daniel with the idea and he was extraordinarily astonished about it. So now that we had our main attraction presumably completed, we were ready to fill the other thirty-five seconds of the solo with other exclusive tricks. We began brainstorming like mad men throwing ideas here and there; we finally had conducted enough to start practicing. Hours of agonizing flipping and falling, we had it down to an art. Easily for a month before the show, we could do the flips with ease, but we weren’t done yet. As we finished flipping our masculine bodies through the air, the choreographer came to me and asked me to do a humongous favor. She then asked me to come up with my own choreography for as many people as I could to do countless acrobatics in the back ground. This was an astounding honor for her to need my professionalism in acrobatics. Even though she did not know it, she had challenged my skills to come up with the best choreography I could administer for everyone. I went back to my charts of tricks Daniel and I had thrown away and thought of people who could manage to do what were going to ask of them. Finally, after a couple of days of strenuous thinking, I had everything I needed to prove to the choreographer that I was worthy of the task she had handed me. As I told her my plans she was exceedingly delighted. So eager, she franticly went to work without delay, for now it was only three weeks before the show and she had a great deal of choreographing left to do. We quickly gathered the people together to see if they could process all the steps that I was throwing to them. Within two weeks of unrelenting rehearsals, everyone was mastering the cycle of staggering tricks they had been thrown in a short period of time. They were hitting the tricks one by one perfectly and landing them like ballerinas dancing, but better. After so many hours of strenuous training, something unbearable happened. Two girls, whom I had chosen not to name for personal reason, came forth with a technique they had been working on, which was so easy that it was pathetic, then deciphered to present it to the choreographer. Now, you must remember we were in a school production, so they try to let every person shine. So, the choreographer allowed them to participate with their stunt, which was not a problem for me, it was merely where they were placed to execute their stunt. While Daniel and I were to do an amazing trick on the sides, they were to do the putrid stunt in front, taking the focus away from Daniel and me. Not only did this make me especially angry, but it threw everything off because you see, they took too long to do the trick, so Daniel and I had to pause throwing the both of us off our strong impetus. After strenuously working for weeks, I was not going to let this decimate my “high”, so to speak, so I disregarded the matter and went on with the proficient training until opening day. Finally it was opening day, when my heart started pounding out of my chest, for the moment had come for me to demonstrate my acrobatic skills. Although I was in several numbers, I only had one on my mind, which of course, was “We Will Rock You.” Therefore; the first several numbers to me were just a blur as I waited impatiently. I exceptionally grew irritated and annoyed and thought about how I wish that I could promptly make time go by, but I could not do so, then the moment finally came. As I walked onto the big stage, Daniel’s eyes met mine, I knew we were focused and ready as we got into position to show our acrobatic skills to everyone. The music started playing as my heart skipped a beat as I seen the crowd watching me like a hawk, it frightened me for only a few moments until I realized I knew what I had to do. First chorus down, then second, and the third, just one more to go, but just before the last chorus, it hit me that there was at least hundreds of pairs of beady eyes watching me. I began to feel nervous over and over until I had to dab the sweat from soaring into my eyes, but I could not think about it anymore, as for the last word rang out telling me to begin. I started with a flawless back handspring, which I landed impeccably, looking up just in time to see Daniel doing his faultless back flip. Our eyes met as we spun around on the spot and ran for the walls. I looked at the wall and felt as if I was a character in Harry Potter and would easily go through the wall, but I wasn’t, so I had to keep my focus. I hit the wall about a foot up from the floor I pushed and lunged flipping through the air like a football being thrown in a rather awesome spiral, easily and gracefully landing on the balls of my feet. I twisted once again, to see the girls finish their diminishing stunt. I focused on Daniel now and nothing else was significantly important. Then what probably took two seconds, felt like an eternity. Finally he nodded and we were off once more, we proceeded to run toward each other, looking as if we would collide in the middle. I could feel the tension in the air; I could almost taste it like a faint metallic tang stinging in the back of my throat. At last, we were in position when it seemed as if everything went into slow motion. I easily went down on my knees gliding across the play area; I looked above me just in time to see Daniel flip over me. I could feel the static from our bodies being so close together it stung. Our gazes met within a foot of each other and as he kept going, everything came back to reality as he landed prestigiously behind me. That is when I got up turning on the spot, looking back to see Grant come forth to meet Daniel and me in the middle. When he got to us, we put one of each of our feet in his hands and as we did thus, he bent down, then up, then down, and finally as he came up pushing our feet as high as he could, it happened again. I was flipping even more graceful than I had before, coming to rest perfectly on the balls of my feet with a smile that anyone could see from a million miles away. The moment I had so anxiously awaited, was at its final end. As Daniel and I faded back into the cluster of fellow actors and actresses, we could feel the auditorium trembling with the thunderous claps; that is when I knew that even though we could not be seen, these claps were for Daniel and me, not the other performers.

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