Chaos Choreography (8 page)

A statuesque blonde rose from the front row of seats and made her way onto the empty judges' podium. She walked with the easy sway of someone who'd been drinking since she got out of bed. I knew she wasn't drunk: she was just tall, wearing impractical shoes, and incredibly loosely jointed. I knew that, but I still held my breath as Brenna Kelly climbed the stairs, waiting for a fall that never came.

“Are we rolling?” she asked, glancing toward a production assistant. Whatever answer she got, she nodded, and said, “On my count, then. Five, four, three, two . . .” She stopped talking and smiled, an expression that took her from attractive to stunningly beautiful. It was directed at the camera, and hence, at America. “For five years, you've tuned in to watch as America's most talented and hardest working dancers took to our stage. You've seen their triumphs and their tragedies, their flights and their falls, and after every season, you've asked ‘what happened to my favorites?'” Her smile softened, turning almost maternal. “I know I've often asked
that question myself. Often enough, in fact, that someone listened, and said ‘why don't we find out?'”

Brenna took a step back, gesturing to the stage with her free hand. “This season, we're doing something that's never happened before in
Dance or Die
history. We're bringing back your top four dancers, America—not just from last season, but from the last
five
. Our top twenty is made up of your very favorites, here to dance for you one more time, to prove that they deserve the title of America's Dancer of Choice.”

She descended the stairs, never looking where she was putting her feet, hitting her marks impeccably. It was a form of dance in and of itself. She always insisted she had two left feet, but I couldn't have done that walk in those shoes without a choreographer. “But, of course, we can't do it without the people who started it all. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your judges.”

Adrian was the first to appear—naturally. It was his show, and he wasn't going to let anyone steal that from him, even if the structure of the program forced him to give Brenna more camera time than he had. He strutted out of the wings, waving for the cameras, grinning. The dancers around me clapped. The families and friends seeded throughout the audience clapped. I clapped. There was no knowing whether we were being filmed right now, and a dancer who didn't applaud for Adrian might well find themselves falling, quite abruptly, from grace.

“Executive producer Adrian Crier,” announced Brenna.

A woman with auburn hair teased into a glorious bouffant was the next to appear. She was smiling, but less broadly: she had Botoxed most of the movement out of her face years ago. It was sad. She was a beautiful woman, but as someone who worked in an industry where the most important thing a woman could be was young, she'd been forced to resort to increasingly desperate measures. Her hatred of Brenna—who was rumored to be the same age, and yet hadn't needed any such procedures—was legendary.

(Brenna was actually older. Brenna didn't need Botox because Brenna wasn't a mammal. This . . . wasn't something we could actually explain to anyone. Oh, well.)

“Our lady of the ballroom, the lovely Lindy O'Toole,” said Brenna.

Lindy waved, smile never shifting, as she crossed the stage to take her place next to Adrian.

The third judge varied from season to season. I crossed my fingers, hoping for one of the faces I liked, and was rewarded when a skinny man in a bow tie, with the sort of smile that promised unexpected explosions, stepped out of the wings. He was waving with both hands, and looked happier to be there than any of us.

“Choreographer, producer, and all-around fabulous human being, Clint Goldfein!” said Brenna.

Clint sat down at the end of the judges' table. Lindy leaned over to touch his arm and say something inaudible, smiling like she hadn't seen him in months, even though she'd been backstage with him for who knew how long. That was show business for you.

My nerves were starting to tingle, and my stomach was a hot pit of terror. It was almost time to take the stage. I wasn't ready. I wanted to be up there right now. It felt like I was pulling myself in two different directions at the same time, and it couldn't help but be an awkward sensation.

Brenna stepped up onto the stage, standing on the edge as she smiled at the judges, and said, “It's so nice to have us all back together again. It's like a big family reunion for me. Adrian? How do you feel right now?”

“Well, Brenna, I've got to be honest with you, I'm as excited as you are,” he said. “Every dancer we've ever had on the show has been magnificent in their own style—they wouldn't have made it through the audition process if they weren't—but there's always a bit of sadness at the end of the season, because we've seen these wonderful dancers leave us one after the other, and then we have to start all over again. The idea of being able to begin with the sort of technique and strength that we normally see at the end of the season . . . it's really exciting.”

“Lindy?” Brenna turned her body slightly, so no one could accuse her of slighting the judging panel's only female member. She was a consummate professional in that regard.

“I'm so excited I could scream,” said Lindy, her surgical smile not budging a bit. “I love all our dancers, you know I do, but some of the best ballroom people we've ever had are going to get a second shot at our stage, and I'm hoping there won't be any slippage in their footwork or their partnering. I'm expecting a whole new level out of this group of dancers. They know what we expect of them. We know what they're capable of. Put it together and it's going to be . . .” She sighed theatrically. She did everything theatrically. Since she'd frozen her face, her voice was all she had left to work with, and she made it do as much as she could. “Magical.”

“I like a little magic,” said Brenna, and turned to Clint. “All right, Mr. Goldfein. Sprinkle some of your magic dust on us, and let's get this show on the road, shall we?”

Next to me, Lyra snorted. I whapped her on the arm as a signal to be still. Out of the three judges currently seated at the podium, Clint was the least likely to go shoving foreign substances up his nose for fun. He wasn't an angel—he worked in Hollywood for a reason—but he'd always struck me as someone who genuinely enjoyed being alive, and didn't see any cause to complicate life with illegal pharmaceuticals. My kind of man, in other words, even if he was way too old for me and my particular code of ethics wouldn't have allowed me to sleep with a judge even if I
hadn't
been married.

“I don't have anything fancy to say about any of this,” said Clint, grinning his wide, disarming grin. “I'm just thrilled to have everybody back with us.”

“And so am I,” said Brenna. “Let's bring them out now, shall we?” She turned to beckon us forward.

That was our cue. In a carefully rehearsed mob, we surged forward and took our places on the stage, settling with our butts on the pieces of tape staged for our benefit.
We were supposed to sit, so that we'd look like the eager, earnest students of dance we were meant to be. Some of us knelt; others settled cross-legged, or tucked their ankles like they were posing for a pinup calendar. I was in the front row between a dancer I didn't recognize and a dancer I vaguely thought had been on the season after mine. Lyra and Anders were somewhere behind me. They'd only been back in my life for a few minutes, and I already missed their presence desperately.

“Well, well, well, look at you all,” said Adrian, beaming a toothy smile in our direction. “I can't believe we were able to get all twenty of you back again.”

I tensed. I wasn't the only one. The show normally opened each season with auditions, milking them for every bit of artificial tension they possibly could. If you auditioned with a best friend or a sibling, for example, you'd both make it as far as the producers could justify, before one of you would be eliminated in the most vicious way possible. This season, by bringing back the twenty of us, they were missing out on all that drama . . . unless, of course, they were planning to eliminate one or more of us right now, when we were completely off guard.

Adrian's smile remained fixed and unmoving for a few seconds, giving us plenty of time to work ourselves into a low-grade panic. The dancers around me began to shift nervously, their chins dipping and their shoulders tensing. I forced myself to remain still, looking relaxed and content in my position. If someone was getting eliminated today, it wasn't going to be
me
. Why, they couldn't do the show without me! It was easier to look like I believed it than it would have been to actually start believing, but I hadn't been a dancer for most of my life without learning how to control my face.

Then he relaxed, moving into his patented sympathetic look, and said, “Come on, my darlings, you can't really believe we'd do that to America, can you?” The fact that he didn't need to say what “that” was should have been proof enough. Wisely, no one said anything. “None of you are getting eliminated today. We brought
back our twenty top dancers because we wanted to show what you could do if you didn't have to go through the early stages of getting used to our format and learning how to work with our choreographers. We wanted to take all the stops off, and let you
run
. So no, there is not going to be a surprise elimination today: all twenty of you will be taking the stage in one week.”

The mass visibly relaxed. Someone murmured, “Oh, thank God,” and the dancers around them giggled, nervous and relieved.

“That doesn't mean we're not gonna put you to work,” said Lindy, not to be left out. She fixed us with a stern look, only slightly diluted by the fact that she was still smiling. “You thought the choreography in your seasons was hard? Now we know what you're capable of, we're not going to be pulling any punches. You're going to work harder than you've ever worked before, and you're going to love every second of it.”

The dancers broke into “spontaneous” applause. There was an element of honesty to what she was saying: we probably
would
love whatever we were told to do. We hadn't become dancers because we wanted to avoid challenges. I'd always been happiest when I was bruised, aching, and on the verge of collapse, and the same held true for most of the people around me.

Clint just beamed. “I'm so happy you're all back with us. I can't—you know eliminations are almost as hard on us as they are on you. You're the ones who have to leave, but we're the ones who have to watch you go. You're our best and brightest, and every time one of you walked away, you took a little bit of my heart with you. It's so nice to have my heart back.” Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded utterly cheesy. Coming from Clint, it sounded sincere. He really did love each and every one of us, which was why he was everybody's favorite judge. No matter how badly you screwed up, Clint would be there to say you were wonderful.

“Now, Adrian, I know our format is a little different this season—what can our dancers expect?” Brenna
moved back into the scene, stopping next to the outside line of dancers. A few people turned to smile up at her. Most of us kept our attention on the judges.

“Well, Brenna, for the most part, we're staying with the tried and true: we're going to be splitting our dancers into partnerships, and those partnerships will dance live on our stage, beginning with next week's performance show. America will vote, and each week the girl and the guy with the lowest votes will be eliminated, until the top four have been chosen. Then it's every dancer for themselves, and we determine who of our top twenty will be America's Dancer of Choice.” Adrian sounded very invested in what he was saying. Forget world peace: what mattered was who America would vote for. “I know you're all aware of what's at stake, and I know you're all going to dance your best. Because we wanted to recapture the magic of your original seasons, we're going to be initially keeping the partnerships where they stood as of the end of your first appearance.”

Some dancers murmured, looking dismayed: they'd lost their partners going into the top four, and would be dancing with people they didn't have much experience with. Others grinned or punched the air. I kept smiling serenely. My partner, Anders, had been with me from the beginning. I'd pulled his name out of the supposedly randomized hat. We knew each other incredibly well, and we'd be able to get back into the groove quickly.

“Initially,” repeated Adrian. Both the cheers and the mutters stopped as we all went still, watching him with the wariness of mice sharing a tank with a snake. “In addition to voting on individual dancers, America will be voting on whether or not any given partnership should be broken up. If your partnership doesn't draw enough votes, you'll find yourself with someone new—and since we have dancers here from five seasons, that someone new may be someone you've never even spoken to before.”

The feeling of unease on the stage was growing. We'd always been subject to the whims of the audience. Now we were going to be more at their mercy than ever.

“I want to stress again that you're with us because we expect truly great things from you. You are the best of the best, the dancers America couldn't forget, and by bringing you back to our stage, we're giving them what they want. Hopefully, we're giving you what you want as well: we're giving you a second chance to claim your title—or in the case of our five winners, to defend it. Only one of you will come away from this as America's Dancer of Choice.”

“But they're all winners to me,” said Brenna. She waded into our little sit-down, motioning with her free hand. “Up, up, my darlings, get to your feet, it's time to say hello properly.”

When she came to me, she took my hand and pulled me into a standing position, smiling sweetly before she moved on to the next dancer, leaving a folded square of paper pressed into the center of my palm. I beamed at her, trying to look adoring and oblivious—two qualities Valerie Pryor had traditionally possessed in plenty—as I tucked my hands behind my back and slipped the square of paper into the waistband of my yoga pants.