Fight Song

Chapter 24

Joe's PoV
Dianne and I had agreed not to talk to one another until after we'd performed. We had to pretend like we weren't dating. We'd also agreed the same with Briar and Milo - we weren't friends, we were competition. It was the way it had to be.

I was pretty confident with our routine. It was commercial, contemporary and acro built into one routine, and we all looked amazing doing it. It incorporated everyone's strengths, meaning we all looked good doing it. The costumes were aesthetically pleasing and matched our story: Rumpelstiltskin, a Twisted Tale. We'd focused on different stimuli for our GCSE choreography, and one stimulus our teacher had suggested to us was twisted fairytales, which I loved. There was so much to explore. So, I'd choreographed a Rumpelstiltskin routine, which was essentially taking my GCSE choreography and stepping it up a notch. It also highlighted the theme of power in the story, and how the King, the Miller's Daughter and Rumpelstiltskin all hold power in different ways and how they fight for it and manipulate others. I didn't have specific characters in my GCSE piece, but for this I'd made Anna the Miller's Daughter, me the King and Amy as Rumpelstiltskin. It was honestly amazing if I do say so myself. We'd choreographed it to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song originally as a joke, but it had stuck and now we liked it, so...yeah. My favourite part had to be when I did my round off flick tuck, and on the tuck landing Amy and Anna rolled over their toes to their knees, everyone else turning and leaping to land at the same time I did. It looked awesome and went wonderfully with the music. We were definitely going to put up a strong fight, but I knew how fierce the competition got at this stage, and I could only hope we'd done enough.

Briar's PoV
I looked at my team, and we looked gorgeous. It was an lyrical acro number, which was kind of risky at this point in the game, but it looked pretty and showed off our gymnastic ability which was definitely our strong suite...so I guess we just had to hope the judges liked acro. It was to the tune Flying With Mother from the How To Train Your Dragon 2 soundtrack - a true beauty. All the girls were dressed in flowy, baby blue dresses with white tights that made us look like woodland faeries, and the boys dressed in white shorts and baby blue tank tops. Our dance's theme was air, and how it moved - we were dancing as wind and clouds, as though we were flying. There were quite a few lifts in the dance, and a lot of contortion and aerials and layouts. It was genuinely a beautiful dance, but I kind of worried that at this stage in the game it could be considered too basic. It could win us Nationals hands down, but Internationals? I suddenly felt extremely nervous.

Dianne's PoV
To say I was nervous would've been an understatement. Our dance was great, don't get me wrong, but I knew that Briar and Joe also had amazing concepts. We were using 'The Battle' from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and we were retelling the fight through a contemporary number. Half of us were on the White Witch's side, dressed in complete white, down to the white hairspray and our hands painted white, and the other half of us were on Aslan's side, dressed in Narnian colours with the Narnia crest on our outfits. As dance captain I'd been able to pick my side, and I am pleased to say I loved being a Narnian. We'd even choreographed a sword fight sequence with actual fake swords and had a fake lion run in around 3/4 of the way through the dance. It was pretty darn cool. I just hoped it was enough to beat the other teams.

Joe's PoV
Brazil had just danced, and it had only just dawned on me that Brazil had made it to the semi finals.

"Zoe," I went up to her.

"Yeah?" she looked at me.

"Brazil are still in the competition," I said. "I swear Zo, if Brazil win again I will resign as dance captain and I'm never dancing again."

Zoe looked at me and burst out laughing. "Okay, firstly how the hell have you only just noticed Brazil are still in the competition?! Also, after that dance I don't think they'll win. Their dance was literally about food. A hip hop number about food. They stand no chance."