Shimmy (3 page)

There’s no one here. Just a cupboard at the end of the room and a small table with white lilies in a glass vase. The air is still and cool. I almost expect to hear soothing music coming from hidden speakers. It seems I’ve stepped into a lawyer’s office, not the foyer of a dance studio. Before I can decide I’ve really walked into the wrong spot, Dana opens another door and sees me.

“Lila, great to see you. Come in, come in. The girls are waiting for you.” Dana’s presence in the room changes everything. The air around her vibrates, and suddenly the room seems warm. She strides over to the cupboard and opens it; a trail of perfume follows her. I stare after her until she says, “Hang up your coat and take a second to settle, then join us in the studio.”

I hang my coat up and take a moment to straighten my clothes. I’ve dreamed of this moment.
I wipe my palms on my pants, roll my shoulders back and step into the studio like a dancer, just as Amala taught us. Dana smiles at me as I pass her, and I grow an inch or two.

The studio is much like Amala’s, with mirrors on both sides of the room and a springy wooden floor to dance on. But at the far end, where the computer and speakers are set up, is a shelf where hip scarves are arranged by color and a rail where a row of matching ruffle skirts hangs. Below them is a series of wicker boxes labeled
black, white, purple, pink, turquoise
and
gold
. None of the piles of rumpled scarves and skirts that always lie around at Amala’s studio.

The troupe of girls is totally different too. Everyone in this group looks like a professional dancer. I never really noticed it before, but that’s not true at Amala’s studio. Some of the girls at Amala’s studio are not very fit. But in Dana’s troupe, everyone is slim and stands with excellent posture. They look like the dancers you see on tv. Instinctively, I roll my shoulders back again.

“This is Lila. She’ll be dancing with us over the next weeks as we get ready for the festival,” says Dana.

The girls break formation and crowd around me.

“We wondered who was coming,” says a tall girl with long dark hair, in a pink T-shirt and the kind of pants Angela always dances in.

Another girl pushes through the others until she’s standing next to me. She is wearing black yoga pants and a turquoise tank top that shows off her muscular arms. “You’re going to love it here,” she says.

There’s a murmur in the crowd, and someone else says, “We all love it here.”

“I’m sure I will,” I say, and as I say those words I really mean them. I’ve only been here for five minutes, but everything is as I imagined it. The girls are perfect. The studio is wonderful. Professionalism oozes from every part of it, even the foyer with its white lilies.

Dana says, “Girls, let’s do a few drills to warm up and to show Lila what it’s like around here. There are only a few weeks before the festival, so the pressure’s on.”

The girls scurry back to their places, and I find a spot at the end of the back row.

“Lila, we always start with our posture, as I’m sure Amala has taught you. Feet firmly planted, knees slightly bent, pelvis rolled gently forward, ribs open, shoulders back, arms in second position and chin tucked slightly in toward the chest.” The girls shuffle and settle into position, and Dana turns on the music. “Hips downbeat left, moving to the right,” she says as she leads us into the drill.

It’s different from what I’m used to, but I like it, and it’s easy to follow the count as we start a series of quarter-time hip circles. Dana turns around and watches us. I follow her eyes as she takes in each of us, and as I do, the nervous knot inside me eases. Every girl has the movement down perfectly. No shoulders sway; no heads bob. Dana catches my eye and smiles at me, and the last of my case of nerves vanishes.

This is going to be fantastic.

“Lila, we’re going to run through the choreography for the festival. I’ll call out the pattern as we go. Follow along as best you can,” says Dana.

I take a deep breath and nod. Dana starts the music, and the girls spring into action. The choreography is daring and fun. It starts with
three girls grouped at stage right. They do a short sequence of hip twists and arm lifts, then step back in a triplet so their bodies mimic the bounce of the drum beat. On the next beat, the three girls to their left pick up an undulation that starts in their hips and rises to their shoulders, following the guitar-like strums of the oud. They circle each other and pass the movement over to the next batch of girls, who flutter their arms around their bodies along with the notes of the oboe. The effect is of a carnival of motion passing across the stage.

I’m in the next group. Dana calls out her instructions for us. “Figure eight starting on the left hip, swing around to face center, right shoulder forward, then back.”

I stumble through the moves, slightly offbeat, my face red as I notice every girl in the room watching, but Dana smiles at me, so I keep going until my little group joins the rest of the dancers in the chorus and no one pays attention to me anymore.
I can do this!

The drums pick up speed, and the oud starts a conversation with the oboe that grows louder and louder while we twirl and shimmy and kick
across the stage, each clump of girls following a different instrument. By the end I am breathless.

“Got it?” Dana asks when the song finishes.

I’m surprised by the question, since Amala never assumes we’ll learn a choreography in one go, but Dana looks at me expectantly, so I nod my head yes and hope it’s true.

“Good. We’ll go through it again. This time, Lila, focus on your posture. I noticed a bit of shoulder hunching last run-through.”

I soften my knees and shake out the tension in my neck before I say, “Okay.”

At the end of class, Dana says, “Work on that timing, girls” as we file out of the room. I try to catch her eye as I pass her, but she’s talking to another girl and doesn’t notice me.

In the lobby, the tall girl who spoke first earlier says, “Well done, Lila. We weren’t sure if you’d be able to keep up, but you did great.”

Everything in me swells, and I feel like I could float away.

Six

“H
ow was it?” are the first words out of Angela’s mouth the next morning on the bus to school.

I sigh. “It was perfect. Dana’s so professional, and she really watches the dancers. She corrects even the smallest faults in posture and timing. It’s…it’s like we’re professionals. Dana doesn’t let us get away with anything.”

“Well, that’s good,” she says.

“And wait till you see the dance, and the girls—they all
look
like dancers, you know? It’s more than how they dress or how well they dance. It’s in the way they stand, the way they
are
. It’s so amazing to be there. Our performance is going to blow everyone else out of the water.”

“Oh,” says Angela with a frown.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I say. “Amala’s choreography is good. You guys are going to do great.”

“Good? Two days ago you loved it,” she says.

“Yeah, but then I saw Dana’s. Her choreography is really fantastic. It’s cheeky—you know, fun. It’s like she’s really listened to the music and heard it. The choreography catches everything, and each girl shows off a different part of the music.”

“You sure know a lot after one class,” Angela says. The bus pulls to a stop and Sarit and Nini get on.

“Yeah, I know. I learned more from her in one day…” I say to Angela, and I’m about to tell her that Dana taught me to start a shimmy in my thighs rather than in my knees so it’s easier to walk with it, but Nini plunks down behind us, leans over the seat and says, “So the new boy, Jonas—I talked to him after school yesterday.”

“Really?” says Angela. She swivels around in her seat so she’s facing Nini and Sarit. “Tell me everything, Nini.” It’s like she’s cut me off. Like she didn’t want to hear any more.

“He’s so nice. Turns out he lives down the street from me, and he actually carried my
books home. Imagine. It was so old-fashioned, but in a good way,” Nini says.

“You’re in love with him!” Sarit says, shoving Nini in the arm.

“Am not,” she says, but she blushes madly as she says it, so we all laugh.

“He has a sister named Beatrix. I met her too. She dances with Dana, by the way, Lila. Maybe she’s in your class. She’s tall and blond, and she looks a lot like Jonas. Hey, how was your first class?” Nini asks.

“Give us details,” Angela says to Nini before I can answer. “What did he say?”

Nini leans back in her seat and says, “He asked me if I always catch that bus home.”

Sarit giggles and says, “He so likes you!”

“I think I met his sister yesterday at Dana’s studio,” I say. “Dana has this amazing part of her choreography where we all come in together like a pinwheel, and Bea stands next to me in that formation. Dana says the choreography of any dance should have different formations to keep the audience’s attention.”

“Wait,” says Angela. “How did you meet Beatrix?”

“She was in the class,” I say.

“I was talking to Nini,” she says.

It’s like in dance when you miss a beat, and everything that comes after is wrong. Nini tells us all about how Jonas invited her into his house and made her a cup of tea, which is where she met Beatrix, and of course I want to hear what she says, but by the time we get off the bus, we’ve heard all about Nini’s visit with Jonas, but they haven’t heard anything at all about Dana’s class, and as we head into school, they don’t even ask.

* * *

It’s easier walking into the studio this afternoon now that I know where to go, but I’m still nervous because although I drilled the choreography every lunchtime and evening since last week’s class, I still don’t know it super well. My bus from school arrives only a couple of minutes before class starts, so the girls are already in the studio when I get there, and I have to pull off my shoes and coat quickly and run into the room.

“Drills again today, girls. I want to get the timing and sequencing of the drum section down,”
says Dana as she strides into the room. We each find our spot in the room and settle into the starting posture. Dana starts the music, and we dance. The opening sequence goes well, and our timing is perfect as we pass the movement from one group of girls to the next.

“Good,” says Dana.

We start the next sequence, where the whole troupe shimmies into the center and creates a pinwheel. The timing’s tricky here, and I’m out of step by one beat.

Dana pauses the music. “Lila, let’s go over the transition into the center. It’s right foot behind left, twirl, and step out left so you’re balanced for the shimmy starting on your right.” I nod, but she motions to me to try it, so I go through the sequence as she’s described it. She frowns and stands beside me.

“Do it with me,” she says. We move together, right foot behind, twirl, step out left. At that point she puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Step out a tiny bit more; that will balance you better. There you go.” And she’s right. It does feel better.

“Got it?” she asks.

“Got it.”

Dana returns to the front of the room, and we pick up where we left off. This time the transition is smooth, and we all enter the pinwheel formation on time.

“Good,” Dana calls.

The music continues, and we circle around each other, creating a wave of motion clockwise and then counterclockwise. We drill it again, but this time as we turn around the circle, Bea and I bump right into each other.

Dana stops the music. “Girls, break for a minute,” she says. “Get yourselves some water while I work with Bea on this.”

We walk to the edges of the room for our water bottles. I reach for mine past the tall girl with long dark hair, who rolls her eyes and says, “Bea never gets transitions.” There’s something brittle about how she stands, but it takes me a second to realize she’s pissed off.

I take a sip of water, then say, “I hope we’re not stopped for long.”

“I know, right?” she says, rolling her eyes again.

A red-haired girl joins us and says, “Chill, Eve. It’ll all be better when we’re on that stage and everyone’s perfect.”

Eve nods and shakes out her shoulders and neck. “Yep, you’re right.” She smiles at me and walks back to the center of the room.

“Eve takes her dance time very seriously, but don’t worry—she’s as critical of herself,” the redhead says. “I’m Sam, by the way.”

I keep an eye on Eve as we go back into our practice. She’s good. Her movements are effortless and graceful, and her body control is stunning. It’s hard to isolate a particular part of the body so that only one muscle group is moving, but when Eve does shoulder lifts, only her shoulders lift. When she does hip drops, only her hips drop. I can’t see that there’s much to be critical about. She’s the best dancer in the class for sure. Someone to watch and learn from.

Dana stands next to Bea through the next two drills and calls out every move she makes, and I also watch closely. I didn’t say anything to Eve or Sam, but deep down I am afraid it might have been me who was out of step when we bumped, not Bea.

Seven

I
n the evening, I practice the choreography over and over, until I know it by heart and could dance it in my sleep. In fact, I do dance it in my sleep—at least, that’s what it feels like, because I dream the steps all night long, and when I wake up, I’m tired and my body’s sore. I’m slow to get going in the morning, and I miss the first bus, so it’s only when I slide into my seat in English that I finally see Angela.

I have news
, Angela writes in the margin of her notebook.

I lean over the table and write back,
Tell
.

It’s about Jonas!!!
she writes.

The exclamation marks say everything. I start to write back, but Mrs. O’Connor asks the class to compose a short paragraph on whether or not
it really is a sin to kill a mockingbird, and Angela pulls her notebook back to her side of the desk. Sigh. That’s so not the point of the book. Doesn’t Mrs. O’Connor know that?