ROYAL AUDITION - 140808 dance / song: key vs english
waiting is horrible.
just sitting there in the hallway of royal entertainment as his chest eats itself up from nerves and hyoyeon and jieun offer quiet words of encouragement or soft pats on the arm -- it's maddening.
"kiki, stop worrying," the sound of hyoyeon's nickname for him snaps him out of his nervous trance. "don't chew your nails, you don't want them to look bad, do you?" she says, reaching out and lowering key's hand from his mouth.
"you'd be nervous too," he grumbles, but he does as she says, crossing his arms across his chest.
"exactly. i was nervous, oppa. when i auditioned for sphere. i know how you feel," hyoyeon says, and key scoffs. he knows she's right, but that doesn't mean he'll admit it.
"i'm sure you'll do great, key," jieun says from his other side, laying a hand on his arm. "there's no way they can say no to you!"
key offers a small smile, but he still doesn't fully believe her words. even so, he does appreciate her peppiness and confidence in him.
"thank you guys for being here," he says, looking first at jieun and then turning his head to look at hyoyeon. "it means a lot, really. and i know you both have busy schedules, so really..."
hyoyeon smiles and lays a hand on his knee, cutting him off. "oppa, don't worry about it. we're here because we want to be. and also because you'd probably tear all your hair out if you were alone," she adds, and key can't help but laugh a little.
"kim kibum!"
the sound of the male voice has the smile dropping from kibum's face, and he looks desperately between hyoyeon and jieun, who seem to share a glance before standing up together and pulling him with them. they say more words of encouragement, but it's hyoyeon's that really get to him: "you're the almighty key, oppa. go in there and show them how great you are."
at those words, key forces himself to stop for a few seconds -- just long enough to take a deep, calming breath. and even though he's still nervous, even though his heart still feels like it's about to pound right out of his chest, he's in control. with a swift smile and nod in hyoyeon and jieun's direction, he pulls his phone out of his pocket as he walks over to the man by the practice room door.
however, he hesitates as he passes by a girl with black hair sitting in the hallway across from the door. "good luck," she says, and key stares at her for a moment. why is she wishing him luck? they're competitors, aren't they? but another look at her face tells him that she means it -- she really wants him to do well. he's just opening his mouth to reply (though with what, he doesn't know) when a small noise from the royal employee at the door has him jumping back to attention.
"i'm sorry," he says, bowing his head in apology as he forces himself to forget the girl as he moves over to the man.
his screen is already unlocked and set on the small playlist he made especially for this audition. he hands it to the man and asks him to "just press play" when he's ready. moving further into the practice room, key looks at the table of judges. he doesn't recognize any of them, but that's to be expected. he had known from the beginning that so jisub himself wasn't going to judge these auditions, and it was highly unlikely that key would be on speaking terms with royal's casting director.
"hello," he says once he's in the middle of the room, going into a quick ninety-degree bow. "i'm kim kibum, but i go by key. first, i'll be dancing. it's my own choreography," he explains. "then i'll be singing a solo from the musical i'm currently starring in: bonnie and clyde."
after a nod to the man with his phone, key settles himself into the starting position of the choreography, with his head and shoulders slumping down and his entire body loose and relaxed. the song begins, playing over the speakers to which the royal employee had connected his phone. the music begins with a few rhythmic tick-tocking noises, and key doesn't move for the first four beats of the song. as the lyrics begin, he slowly lifts his head and begins to roll his shoulders, as if stretching out sore muscles after sleeping for too long.
as the singers repeat the same line again, key starts moving some more, rolling his body as if doing a simple dance as one might do at a party or in a club. the song suddenly bursts into its first verse, and key's body rolls grow quicker and more intense, and soon he's adding in movements with his arms as well. he has to fight a smile as his nerves start to fade away, only to return as waves of excitement.
the body rolls and smooth arm movements turn sharper as the lyrics end and are replaced by an instrumental break, and key revels in the sensation of smoothly moving from one move to the next without even having to worry about forgetting anything, since he's the one who came up with it in the first place, and he's been practicing practically nonstop for the past forty-eight hours on top of that.
after withdrawing from the nova auditions, kibum's been rather insecure about his own choreography, particularly his enjoyment of doing girlish dances. he hasn't practiced or performed any of his own choreography since then, but this opportunity from royal made him think of one dance that he thought would be perfect.
the song is by a girl group, and not one that is known for its dances: in fact, this song in particular isn't even well-known; it's one of the non-title tracks from an old album (though it was new at the time key designed the dance) and has probably never been performed live by the artist. the original choreography key made for it was meant for his dance crew, luminosity, to do as a group. however, the crew broke up before key got to teach them the dance, and he hasn't used it since, though he's never forgotten the moves or the song.
when he was recreating the choreography for one person, he tried to incorporate little things to make it fit him alone, as opposed to all five members of the dance crew. after he finished, he showed it to hyoyeon, taemin, and fei (though fei had to watch through a video message on skype), and they all said that it looked as though he had combined some moves that are traditionally associated with girlish dances with moves that seem more masculine. that hadn't been his goal, but after thinking about it for a while, he found that it was perfect. kim kibum, the perfect blend of masuline and feminine. he thinks it suits him. he wants to show the judges not only his talent, but also who he is, and this dance is perfect for that.
he feels like the chorus is the perfect summary of his choreography. while fei's dances have always had smoother moves and transitions and taemin's tend to be more popping and locking, key likes to think that his choreography is a healthy mixture of the two. even better, this song is from a girl group, but since it doesn't have a generic dance or practically any other connotations with it in society, he felt that he could do whatever he wanted with it. because of that, he was able to make it his own, and he feels like he's showcasing that now.
shortly after the second chorus, there's a pause in the music where one of the members of the group shouts a sentence in english: "hey! what do you wanna get this time, mr. collector?" out of habit, key mouths it along with her, partly because it's a bad habit of his to lip sync along with lyrics as he dances.
right after the line, the song goes into an electronic dance break. the original choreography key designed told a story of marionettes rebelling against their puppet master, and the dance break was the climax of that story. however, he made a few drastic changes to that when he redesigned the dance for his audition. he kept a lot of the individual moves (mostly because they look cool and he's good at doing them), but the story is no longer attached to them, so he worries that a few of them might not make sense. but then he always dispels those thoughts with the insistence that royal's judges probably weren't paying much attention to the choreography's story.
the dance break is filled with popping and locking and moves that are a lot more hiphop-y than the rest of the dance, but since the music stands out so much from the rest of the song, key figured that the dance should too.
after the dance break is a final chorus, much more energetic than the last two, and key throws everything he has into it. he stops holding back his smile for the sake of the dance, and he forgets about the audition, about the people in front of him as his mind goes blissfully blank. he feels nothing but the music, can focus on nothing but the sheer passion and love for dance that courses through him more and more with every beat. his dance has a certain sassiness to it now, and he could laugh at how giddy he feels right now.
as the song ends and he breathes himself back into reality, a single thought pops into his head. oh shit, how am i gonna sing now?
fortunately, he thought ahead. between the two songs on his playlist is a fifteen-second track of nothing, to give himself time to breathe and prepare himself for the singing portion.
"next i'll be singing my solo from the musical bonnie and clyde," he says, thankful that he's accustomed enough to that dance that it doesn't take him too long to recover his breath.
he knows his fifteen seconds are up when the instrumental begins. it's a simple guitar strum, and key takes that chance to clear his throat and take a breath before he has to sing.
it's a love song, and even though at the start of his rehearsals, the song was difficult for him, after a month of rigorous rehearsals and lessons with jieun, he managed to get close enough to mastery of it in time for opening night. and the night after he heard about his audition, he and jieun had a last-minute lesson to prepare, in which she had helped him work out the final few kinks in the song.
he remembers opening night, sitting on stage in the bathtub with bonnie's actress -- no, bonnie -- across from him, clyde, or keylyde as his castmates had taken to jokingly referring to him. he imagines that the clock on the wall just behind the judges is bonnie, and he gets himself into character, smiling at "bonnie" and closing or opening his eyes whenever appropriate.
the last note is always difficult for him, since his voice tends to waver, but he manages to hold it out, even though he does go a bit flat near the end. once the song is over, he blinks once at the judges before bowing once again.
even after straightening up, he doesn't move until they tell him he can go, and only then does he cross the room and take his phone back from the employee, bowing once to him and once more to the judges. "thank you for your time," he says before leaving the room in much lighter spirits than he walked in with.
hyoyeon and jieun immediately hail him and demand to know how it went, and key just laughs and assures him it went well. and on their way to the exit, he starts explaining everything to them, from the good things about his dance to the flat note at the end of his song. they both assure him that he'll get in for sure, and for the first time, key manages to believe it.