Assassin's Creed High-School

Dance Club

I've finally returned after an agonisingly long hiatus!!! It's so good to be back where I belong. I'm sorry to have kept you all waiting. If my lovely readers are still hanging around, then thank you very much for keeping up the support - it means the absolute world to me. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Shout out to Deadlydeerman who was a gigantic help with this chapter!

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The refreshing scent of oranges is an unexpected pleasure when entering the dance studio – you thought the stench of sweat-soaked laundry and unwashed feet from the change rooms would forever linger in your nostrils. Glad to know how wrong you were.

The air conditioner hums in greeting and you swiftly shut the door in order to keep the cool air contained. Making your way over to the floor-length windows, you nearly slip on the freshly polished floor; doubt started to occupy your mind. It was bad enough that you were born with two left feet, the last thing you needed was to have the floor turn against you as well. Your schoolbag slides off your shoulder and lands on the floor with a meaty thump before you decide to observe the other students, silently hoping to witness a few failures so you could relish in the knowledge that you weren’t alone in your dancing incompetence.

Unfortunately...they were perfect.

Bastards.

Every move is exceptionally synchronised as they dip and sway around the room like petals traversing the wind. Even their outfits – colour coded tights and leotards – are exquisite and seemed to have been professionally tailored. And then there was you. Food-stained sweats and an oversized t-shirt which looks as though it’s been around since the dawn of time.

Perhaps this wasn’t the right class for you after all. So you don’t know how to dance, not everyone does. You’ve gotten through parties and family gatherings well enough as a wallflower all these years, what’s a few more? Besides, dancing nowadays is mostly spastic gyrating anyway, so it’s really no big loss.

Before you can fully contemplate sneaking out whilst maintaining your dignity, the teacher is entering. It’s her. Paola. She enters the studio like some high priestess of an age long since forgotten. Positioning herself in regal isolation before the wall of mirrors, skin taut over high cheekbones and smokey eyes flashing, she begins to stretch those impossibly long limbs of hers. The other club members cease their practice to watch, glimmers of admiration appearing in the eyes of most.

Paola extends a leg and let it rest upon the barre, nimble fingers readjusting the warmer hugging her calf. Once satisfied, her leg abruptly kicks forward, toes pointed and calf muscles flexed, and she pivots in a revolving whirl of sharp precision and accurate grace.

Everyone takes a subconscious step away to allow her room for the demonstration, a few murmurs of awe being passed from one student to another as they watch, enthralled.

The entirety of Paola’s being began to advance in movement with purposeful clarity and absolute control. With each poised stride taken, it became crippling obvious just how demanding and rigorously punishing the practice of dance can truly be on one’s body. It was no surprise how she had been deemed one of the greatest dancers of this generation – the woman was beyond magnificent.

“Dance is not merely body movement – it is poetry in motion.”

Those were the first words to leave Paola’s painted lips when her demonstration came to an end. She smiled and looked to each student whilst continuing to speak, “With thoughts, emotions, expressions and elegant movements, it brings alive the meaning. Dance is an art from which is done with body, mind and soul. A dance done by our body alone is incomplete – it has to have the right expressions and involvement of the dancer. His or her inner self. Dance must be done with passion in order for its true beauty to invoke emotion and bring life to the silent story begging to be told.”

She sunk to the floor on her rump and extended one leg, her hand following suit and making contact with the tips of her toes. She was so flexible, whereas you were about as flexible as Lucy when she wears those excruciatingly tight pants she insists looks good – she refuses to believe you when you say her legs remind you of sausage casings.

“The theme for this semester shall be ‘love’,” Paola informs the class, lips quirking briefly at one corner. “We’ve all been blinded by the blanket of emotions that comes from falling down the precipice of union into love. While we only have one word for it, the ancient Greeks in their pursuit of wisdom and self-understanding, found eight different varieties of love that we all experience at some point. However, we shall be focusing only on two: Eros and Agape.”

Just like Yuri on Ice, you thought.

“Eros represents the idea of sexual passion and desire. The ancient Greeks considered Eros to be dangerous and frightening as it involves a ‘loss of control’ through the primal impulse to procreate. It is a passionate and intense form of love that arouses romantic and sexual feelings. Agape, on the other hand, is what some call spiritual love. It is an unconditional love, bigger than ourselves, a boundless compassion, an infinite empathy. It is the purest form of love that is free from desires and expectations, and loves regardless of the flaws and shortcomings of others.”