Superstars: Irish Courage

Irish Courage

‘Music may unite us but it is also what sets us apart. You live your life to a rocking rhythm and move to your own beat. I dare you to...’

Alice Serenity was on her way to her new beginning after being kicked out of her dance troupe of ten years to bring in new, easier dancers. She’d flown across the Atlantic from her home in Ireland to start anew in America, Tennessee to be exact; she figured why not go to a place where she could be free to do what she wanted and be able to feel the music and be in a place where early rock and roll and soul music originated from.

But of course things didn’t turn out to be like the fairytale she planned, she was running out of money fast and by the look of her petrol gage she was running low on fuel with nothing around for miles. If she continued driving along she had to come across something eventually right? Maybe a town where she could get a job and earn some easy money?

The main reason she had chosen America was to get away from everything in her homeland of Ireland, Dublin. She’d spent her whole life in that one place with only one or two holidays a year since that was all her mum and dad would allow as they were more focused on their work instead of family. Alice lived for dance but her parents had other ideas, they told her that it was time to stop dreaming and get out into the real world because after all no respectable twenty-three year old woman could make a living out of dance.

That was the first hint of her impending demise in her dance troupe, the choreographer and leader of the troupe, Eleanor McGraw had been after her for years in hopes of having an excuse to kick her out. Of course Alice had no idea why the withered middle-aged woman had some sort of vendetta against her but she got her wish when she kicked Alice out after a group vote on unfair terms.

Her parents were away for the weekend when she packed her bags with everything she needed which consisted of every piece of clothing that fitted her, any jewellery that she owned and was valuable to her along with the few pictures she had of friends and family and her absolutely essential I-pod. Without her I-pod she wouldn’t have a beat and without a beat she couldn’t dance.

She left a note for her parents and told them she was moving out since she was over eighteen and could do as she liked and they couldn’t do anything about it, Josie and Tom Serenity had always been protective of Alice and wanted the best for her even if they were making her unhappy; they wanted her to make something of her life and not waste it away.

Alice had been saving money for months to even get close to enough money to get anywhere away from Dublin, she took the ferry over to the England and travelled to London where she spent a few weeks. She discovered dancers that danced so differently than she did; they twisted and moved unlike anything she had ever seen. She studied them and then moved on to her next destination. It carried on like that as she studied every dancer she came across and took note of every locking of a joint, every spin, and kept it placed in the memory at the back of her mind.

When she got bored of England she decided to take the plunge and travel over to the United States and see what they had to offer. She touched down in New York and purchased a car for cheap then started her studies all over again, when her money started to get low she would do a few odd jobs and earn it back until she moved on.

So now here she was, sitting in the cab of the rusty old red truck that she now owned as she cruised along an aging tarmac road on an orange warning light as a sign of her urgency for fuel but Alice didn’t mind because after all if she had gone to the trouble of coming this far, why would she let this small bump get in her way?