Masked Risks

Chapter 2

“Chad and Kevin, try isolating more during the plié part. Make it choppier, and everyone else will go smoother. I think it’ll look cool.” We were finally at the studio, which was actually owned by Avery’s aunt who let us rehearse at night for free, as long as we locked up afterwards and kept the place clean. Sometimes she asked for a sneak peak before we filmed a routine and posted it on youtube, which was good because she offered some helpful suggestions a lot of the time.

I managed to get out of the house without too much pestering from my mom. Though, she did make sure to remind me to keep tomorrow evening free since she invited a bunch of people over to welcome some old friends into the neighborhood. I guess they just moved here from New York and she wanted me to be there to meet them. Whatever, I usually sneak out after an hour or so anyway.

“Let’s try that. Ready… 5, 6, 7, 8,” I counted us in. We stood on the wood dance floor facing the large mirror in a straight line in the center of the room. I was in the middle, wearing a pair of baggy gray sweats and a tank top, with Kevin and Chad on either side of me and Avery and Pepper stood at the end, everyone dressed similarly with baggy sweats and tank tops or t-shirts. Our feet were clad with sneakers that were kind of battered and used, which is what made them so convenient to dance in.

Everyone started moving along to the counts and it all started coming together. I loved how it was turning out and I actually felt proud of how we were able to work together so well to create something so amazing.

“Yeah, I like that a lot better,” I announced when we were finished practicing. “I guess everyone should grab their masks. I think y’all look good enough to film.”

Everyone whooped and everyone broke away from the final formation to retrieve our masks.

It was a risk to be filming at all, but it felt like a waste not to share our routines with anyone outside of our crew. We all agreed that we wanted to remain as anonymous as possible because we didn’t want people to know who we were.  It was easier to hear people’s initial reactions knowing that they didn’t know us personally. People on the internet can be brutal, especially people in our school. If anyone at school knew it was the five of us, school would be even more miserable. I could only imagine what Lindsay would have to say.

I feared my parents finding out about my secret, but I figured the chances of them finding my videos were slim. They were hardly online and, when they did, it was mostly to check their emails, not to watch videos on youtube.

The best part about filming it, though, had to be the masks. The first video we filmed was to Me and You by Cassie and we just used simple black ski masks. At that point, it was just Avery, Pepper and I who were willing to go in front of the camera while Kevin and Chad learned the choreography but saw no point in posting it anywhere. This was at the beginning of the school year, around October. Considering we expected less than 100 views, we got a fairly large response with over 2,000 views, mostly from our school. Kevin and Chad decided it was worth posting the videos after that, so now in February, our average views on our videos is well over 500,000, depending on how popular the song is when we post the video at that point.

The ski masks got a little boring because I felt like a bank robber and it just generally felt silly. Chad, our personal comedian, suggested buying a few weird masks online. When he showed us some of the options, we were all laughing to the point of tears. The idea of dancing with them on made the idea even funnier, so naturally, we all picked a strange mask we thought fit our personalities best and started using those instead.

Of course, we didn’t totally think the plan through. It was difficult to breathe with them on at first as we danced, but we never even performed routines to a full song, so it was only about a minute and half of wearing the masks, which wasn’t completely unbearable. It was also hard to just dance with them on at all. I started working them into the routines, which was a challenge, but it was something I thought helped me keep my choreography brain fresh and our viewers interested. Plus, it was just plain fun.