Name : Vania L.

Task : Writing a narrative story

The Winner

This is the fifth year our school participates in the Senor High Modern

Dance Battle that is held by the local government. The Senior High Modern Dance

Battle is an annual event that is participated by the best modern dance groups from

many schools in and around the city. Our seniors won three of the four battles in a

row since the second year of the event. This year, my teammates and I are going to

bring our school’s name on the first position again for the fourth time.

Tripudio Crew, that’s how we call our modern dance group and how we

show our love and interest in dancing. Some of the members are tenth graders who

were joining modern dance extracurricular last year, and some new members were

taken from several auditions we held few months ago. We are now a solid group

consists of 4 girls and 4 boys. Me, Lisa, Tony, Jack, Ann, Stefanie, Mike and Yui are all

having the same passion in dancing.

We had been practicing almost everyday after school for a month, and the

real battle is only one month away. Luckily, we have an ex-dancer coach who really

supports us. Her name is coach Gina. She has a 15-year-old son whom to me seems

like having a problem in the social life. He attends all practices we had and watches

us from a distance. We make fun of him sometimes when our coach is not around.

She’s a very nice coach, though.

One day, coach Gina was not able to come to our practice in the studio.

We decided to have our practice videotaped and we’ll send it to her house to show

her our progress. The girls added some fantastic choreography to the dance. I’m sure

we can win another victory this time because we’re going to show some

choreography that are rarely performed in public. This choreography is inspired by

Yui’s story on the Japanese dancing traditions.

“Hey, coach Gina. It’s Jim and the Tripudio Crew,” I said as I waved to the

video recorder. “We added some movements inspired from Japanese dance, we

hope you like it.” I ran to my position.

The 5-minute duration dance finished at last. The room was filled with our

own cheers and shrieks. With all of the skills that we’ve got, we’re really sure to win

the battle this year. We’ve won plenty of similar competitions among schools and

other organizations. These experiences are the keys that bring us to this stage right

now. When everyone went home, I dropped by coach Gina’s house that is close

enough to my house to give her the videotape. When I got to her house, she was not

there. There was only her son in the house.

“Oh, hey, what’s up?” he said behind the door.

“Ah, just give this to your mom,” I handed him a USB.

“Mm.. I left the tap in the bathroom open, maybe you can come in and

send the file to my laptop,” he said as he went inside and let the door open.

“Well, okay,” I said in a peculiar way.

I stepped inside and looked around. There were many photographs of

young coach Gina in her moves and I could also see plenty of medals and trophies

arranged nicely in a large wooden shelf. “Hm, she used to have great times,” I

thought. I sat on the couch where a laptop is on in front of it. I plugged my USB right

away and waited for a while. There was a folder with ‘dance’ written on it on the

desktop. I looked around the room and make sure that the boy’s not there. I was

curious about the folder and the boy himself. He didn’t talk much, so I was hoping

that I could get some information about him.

I was quite surprised with what is contained in the folder. It was a pile of

videos of the boy dancing. I scroll down to the most recent video he made. It was

made yesterday. I played the video and was expecting that it’s going to show me

something unpredictable. I watched the video carefully. I was right. It was something

unpredictable. The boy waves his hand, move his hips and jumps following the

rhythm of the music. He dances the choreography that we had been practicing all

this time. He dances the same way we dance our choreography.

As I heard the sound of footsteps, I closed the video immediately and

pretended that I was doing nothing there.

“Have you sent it?” asked the boy calmly.

“Oh, umm.. I’m about to send it now. Can you please show me which

destination file should I send this to?” I asked.

“Just drop it in the desktop. Oh, I’m Chuck by the way.

“Ah, Jim. Nice to meet you, Chuck,” I said as I took my USB and stood up.

“Wow Jim, I really love to see you and your dance group practicing. You

guys seem to have this sort of energy that shivers everyone who’s watching,” he said

passionately.

I don’t really get the point of what he’s trying to say, but I responded him

with an ‘okay’ and went home directly.

The next day at school, we discussed about the costumes for our

performance. Yui suggested that there must be a little Japanese touch because we’re

performing a little Japanese traditional dance there. We agreed. The girls are going

to collect all materials needed for our performance after school while the boys have

got some songs to be mixed up. After school, we kept discussing about how our

performance is going to be like. When we’re walking down the stairs, there were

some juniors running down in a rush. One of the kids bumped Ann and she felt down

the stairs. I shouted at the kids and we ran to her immediately. She cried out of pain,

we could see that. This is a problem, I thought.

We called our principal and he took her to the hospital. The girls were

accompanying her in the hospital and all the boys were cheering for her. On our way

home, we were hoping that Ann’s going to be alright and our battle would still run

smoothly.

In the morning, the girls told us a bad news. Ann’s still in the hospital with

her right foot covered up in cement. The accident had broken her leg and she has

more than 1 month until her recovery.

“How are we going to join the competition now?” asked Mike desperately.

“We still have to do that, guys,” convinced the other members.

“Let’s open an audition for temporary member!” Lisa suggested.

“No, we can’t we have to use our time effectively now. Besides, we have

rejected quite many people before. I’m not really sure that people are interested in

joining our group again,” thought Tony.

“Tony’s right, we have limited time. We have to figure something else

out,” I said.

I suddenly remembered Chuck. I haven’t told my friends anything about

him yet because I don’t think that he’s really important. But this time, he would be

an idea.

“Alright guys, let’s meet coach Gina after school,” I smiled.

Along the way to coach Gina’s house, I told the others about Chuck. They

were partly shocked like I was when I watched Chuck’s video.

“Are you sure? That creepy anti-social guy?” asked Jack.

“I am! And btw, he was great. He dances really well and he knows the

choreography already. We can ask for his help to substitute Ann,” I explained.

When we arrived at the house, we talked to coach Gina about Ann and our

plan. She agreed on it as long as her son agreed to do that as well. Chuck came in to

our discussion, and with a lot of considerations, he agreed to take Ann’s position and

join the Tripudio Crew to compete in the modern dance battle. Chuck was really

excited on this. He has always wanted to perform in front of people.

The crew visited Ann everyday, wishing her a real soon recovery so she can

watch them live on the battle in a few more weeks. They practiced for 2 hours

everyday when the D day is approaching. Their black and red costumes are ready to

wear. The kids saw themselves with pride and excitement towards the battle day. All

other school members cheer at them and wish them a good luck.

The time has come. The qualification round of this event is held today. We

were all costumed up and the competition starts when we enter the hall. We could

feel the thrill once we entered the hall. It was very crowded and noisy. There were

more than 50 groups competing today to pass the qualification round and proceed

to the next stage. The Tripudio Crew waited for their turn in the holding room

behind the stage. They could hear the sounds of applauses and cheers people gave

after the performance of particular group.

And it came our turn. We said a short prayer before we got into the stage.

We gave each other a smack on the shoulder to cheer them. We got into our

positions. When the music was played, we danced accordingly. We gave all our best

during our performance. When we finished performing, our hearts were relieved. In

the backstage, Chuck told us that he was sorry for any mistakes and misses he did

because that was the first time he performed in from of many people.

“Yeah, you were doing great!” I said.

The rest groups performed really well too. We thought that this is gonna

be really tough and difficult because the rest performed really great. When it’s time

for the announcement, we really had our ears on it. We were so grateful that we

made it to the top ten groups and proceed to the next stage, which is held two more

weeks. We went home with a really satisfied heart and still a huge excitement.

During the two weeks, we created another dance and we had full practices

everyday. Chuck did really well with the team. He was not as nervous as before. We

felt more relax and more faith now. Ann told us that she heard the news and she

congratulated us on our pre-winning. She really wishes that she could come and

participate in the competition with the Tripudio Crew.

Two weeks had gone. This was the moment of truth for us, the senior high

students who were competing for the champion of the modern dance battle. We

were ready to show people how good we are from time to time. The performers

before us were all stunning and great. Long applauses were heard from the

backstage. I told my teammates and myself that we have to make people give longer

applause than the previous one.

So it was finally our turn again. We entered the stage and prepare

ourselves to give the best we’ve got. The music played. We began to follow every

beat precisely. In the middle of the dance, we performed some amazing attractions

to attract people and get their attentions. I could hear quite a long applause along

our performance. Finally, we threw some of our properties at the end of the song to

mark that it is finished. People gave a long-standing applause as we went backstage.

While waiting for the announcement, we relieve ourselves by relaxing our

body and mind. Then I felt that I did this competition not to be the winner, but to

show the best of us to people. The announcer mentioned our name for the first

position for this year’s event. Being the winner is like a gift to us. But from joining

this competition, I learned that the process of achieving our goal is more important

than to be the winner.