MGA4 Final | Solo Performance Song: Move by TaeminJun [0:05-2:37] Outfit/Hair/Make-up: [x] [x]
When he learns that he’s made it through, there’s a release of pent up pressure in his chest like the crisp snap of a bottle being twist open, a sense of relief so sharp that it almost registers like pain, but the relief is washed away by a wave of anxiety, laced with anger, when the position selection process begins, and he discovers how low he’s ranked.
Second to last.
He almost spends the rest of the day upset, the anger quickly fading into a distinct sense of hurt. Was he not good enough?
The hurt makes it difficult for him to focus for a couple of hours, as they’re told about their schedule for the upcoming week, it only barely registers how chaotic it sounds. A solo stage and a group stage, rehearsal on your own time, appointments for costume measurements tomorrow, fittings during the week, stage effects and back-up dancers available upon request, here’s who to speak to for that, where to go, it’s a barrage of information, and it ends up being just a little too much, and he has to duck into a restroom to gather his thoughts, to find some quiet.
Sicheng aches for this
It’s a recent revelation, sparked in part by the heat of the competition, but he wants this.
Perhaps he even needs it; he hasn’t got much in the way of prospects in South Korea at the moment, and there’s a fear that creeps further in him with each passing day that his parents will eventually see fit to cut this little adventure of his short if he doesn’t produce some kind of result soon. And the thought of having to leave behind the friends he’s made here hurts him.
The low ranking hangs over him like a spectre, and seems an insurmountable barrier, something hopeless, before it occurs to him that it’s something new for him in the competition. Somewhat, at least.
He thinks back to his first five or six weeks on this show; he’d been ranking high, second or third out of eight or nine, regardless of the amount of screentime he’d gotten, he’d been doing well, in a manner of speaking.
Of course, he’d been in a very different mental space at the time, this competition had seemed so light then, hadn’t felt like something he needed, it’d been easy to practice and to perform and to do his thing, and then between Donghyuck and Xuxi’s health scares and hospitalisations, Mark’s original elimination, everything, the show had become so very heavy, so very real, and it’d thrown Sicheng off of his game.
He had to rediscover that focus, that lightness. He had to figure out again how to rid himself of the anxiety and fear and just do his best, free of distractions.
The first order of business, of course, is to determine what he’s even doing.
This is the final, and that meant a lot of things. First and foremost, of course, it was the final impression the audience and the panel and the production team would all have of him, but it was also more than that, it was the first solo performance since the beginning of the competition, since there had been so few contestants. It was a proper chance to stand out, to show off his individual colour, to make a mark and prove that he had some sort of spark that warranted collection. It was an opportunity that he was going to take full advantage of.
He only had to decide what colour he really was.
Chinese traditional dance is the obvious choice. It’s what he’s trained in, for a lifetime, and he can perform a routine like it’s nothing, with the ease of an auntie idling through a shopping centre, and at first it seems like the best choice, too, until he really gives it more consideration; he’d already done it twice in this competition, three times, if one was to count his Shangri-La performance, and how he’d worked it in there, and at this rate...perhaps it was what people expected of him. They expected him to do a traditional dance routine, and the more Sicheng thought about it, the less of a good idea it seemed. It wasn’t all that relevant, truthfully, and although interesting, would be relegated to some sort of “special talent” that he showed off on variety shows if he were to actually become an idol.
He wanted to not only do something unexpected, something new, but he also wanted to prove that he could perform, that he could be an idol.
So he decides he won’t be doing his traditional dance, and although there’s a flare of anxiety in that decision, in straying from what is easy and known, he thinks that it is a choice that will serve him well in the end.
When it comes to the task of deciding what exactly he’ll be performing, if not traditional dance, it’s a somewhat difficult matter, and after a good twenty minutes of empty-handedness, of half-thoughts and neverminds, he tries to narrow his options down by asking himself: who does he admire?
What kind of performer does he want to be?
It’s an easy answer. He recalls having written it on his application form, even. Sicheng admires a complete performance; he admires artists who sing, dance, but most importantly, embody their performance. He isn’t sure what it is, exactly, more than some kind of electricity in their eyes, a measured sureness in their movements, the x factor that bridges the gap between someone merely talented, and someone noteworthy.
A tall order, certainly, and a challenge to his skills, he thinks, but that’s the performer he wants to grow into, and that’s the kind of performance he wants to give for the final.
He eventually settles on Move by Jun. The LC9 member had sprung to mind as possessing that spark that Sicheng had admired, and although other songs by him, like Press Your Number, had seemed just a little too far outside of Sicheng’s range, especially with only a week to prepare, Move’s lighter, more sensual vocals and focus on performance had seemed like the perfect choice. He thought he’d be able to handle the vocals, playing to his strengths by not going for something too intensive while still showing that he could do it, that he was easily a triple threat in the making, while also allowing him to focus on the dance itself, which had a delicacy and a grace to it that would match quite well with the inherently lyrical forms of Sicheng’s movement.
He talks to who he needs to talk to after this decision is made, and it’s approved, and he’s got back-up dancers, four women, and it’s a lot. He almost doesn’t even know where to start, but the ladies are professionals after all, and he arranges times to meet and rehearse with them, between this and the group rehearsals he’s not got time for much more than practice and a...passable, if not great, night’s sleep every day of the week, and Sicheng thinks that that works for him.
He wants to do his utmost, and he hopes the strange lump of magma, of determination and nervousness twisted round into one, would serve as some sort of fuel that he could use to push through into his best form, into his best performance.
Maybe his mother had helped him by driving him like some sort of dance robot; it’d made it easy for him to shut everything else out and do only dance, it’d hardened him to hours and hours in wood-floor studios, watching his reflection glide across it.
He can’t go into autopilot, though. He doesn’t want to let himself appear vacant, especially with a song so sensuous, he had to be present.
It’s something he struggles with over the course of the week: the sex appeal.
Sicheng isn’t blind, or stupid, or unaware; he isn’t some egomaniac, but he’s aware that he’s generally considered good-looking, although he tends to hear pretty more often than handsome, he doesn’t think that will be hindrance, that maybe it will match well with the strange, androgynous appeal of the song he’s performing. What isn’t, though, is anything close to sexually assured, and although the song isn’t explicit, its lyrics are suggestive, and the performance itself delicately sexy. It isn’t outright, in the form of hip thrusts or anything, but it’s still more than he’s accustomed to. Feeling and exuding sexy wasn’t something he was well-versed in.
He asks one of his dancers about it, ears red, extremely embarrassed to be asking someone how he might be a little sexier, but she’s amused by the question.
“You’re...adorable,” she squeals, prompting a whine from the boy that she quickly hushes, “You just...have to believe it. Or at least feel it, just then. You’re so pretty, though! I think it suits you really well, like...my advice is to not think so hard about it and think more about how you want to feel, and other people will feel it, too?”
Sicheng thanks her for the advice, although it doesn’t exactly reassure him.
He sets out on the task of discovering his own sexual self-esteem, which initially is absurd to him. Embracing that aspect of his identity isn’t something he’s done much of, but he eventually settles into some strange space where after a while, sometimes he’ll find himself blushing at the end of a practice run, at himself really, and he wonders if he’s become a megalomaniac, if it’s the confidence boost he’s felt from fan comments, or what, but he manages to convince even himself that he’s got a very definite sense of sex appeal.
He’s got pretty eyes that radiate intensity with a bit of smudgy make-up, a long elegant nose, and big, plump lips...and if he thinks too much about all of those things he feels a strange heat in his chest.
He’s very particular, he finds, making every decision available to him with a thoughtfulness that surprises even himself, although he’s always been prone to overthinking. From the cut of the song he’ll be performing, chosen to peak and fade out dramatically in the end, to the clothing him and his dancers will wear; they’ll be dressed simply in all black, and he’ll wear something a little revealing, in red and white stripes. It was something he’d once spoken to a costume designer at his old dance company about: you could use colour to draw the viewer’s eye to a certain dancer, or area of the stage, and Sicheng wanted every eye on him.
Perhaps it’s the amount of practicing he’s doing, or the anticipation that boils inside of him, swelling with each days until it’s oceanic, but the week passes by in a blur, and he feels like he’s had just enough time to pull his performances together, to tighten them into something worthy before the day of filming arrives, but not a second longer.
He wonders how everyone else feels about how polished they are, about where they stand, because for him, it’s a strange cocktail of peace, of confidence, of anxiety, of need, and he tries to strangle it into some form of submission before it’s his time to film, succeeding only very narrowly before his number is called, and production staff are ushering him around, double-checking his mic, reminding him of where his cameras will be.
It’s not as nerve-wracking as he thought it would be, standing on stage by himself, perhaps because he isn’t really, with his dancers.
He waits for the lights to raise, and the track to click on, a staffer off the side of the stage giving him a finger count until it does, and almost immediately he’s singing.
The song isn’t hard to sing, for the most part, not for Sicheng. It’s a gentle vocal performance, rooted in suggestion, the song itself all about furtive glances, strange feelings, dizzying attraction.
Sicheng does his best to embody the energy of quiet intensity that the song requires, rotating his hips slowly over top the beat, his arm movements, thought careful and rehearsed, move like morning mist over water, he invites his listener to smudge her carefully applied make-up, running a thumb over his lower lip as he does so.
It’s an intense performance, and even with the large crowd, and the cameras, Sicheng is blushing under his BB cream by the time he’s finished, something about the performance having felt strangely intimate, perhaps a combination of who he’d secretly been thinking of, largely by accident when trying to embody seduction, and the fact that he stood alone on stage this time.
He bows when he’s done, as the light dim and the music fades, and he makes his way backstage, where he’s told to change into something more comfortable, and updated on the schedule for the rest of the day, which he barely registers, the adrenaline still pumping through him, clouding his perception.
Sicheng is proud of himself, and although he knows what he wants, and that he’ll be disappointed to lose out when he’s so very close, when the prize is in nearly in grasp, he can’t help but feel a strange sense of peace, as though what is meant to happen will happen.
If what he’s done isn’t good enough for those judging him, he will at least have the knowledge that it was good enough for himself, that he’d challenged himself, and rose to it.
He’ll be fine either way, he knows, but he hopes that someone on that panel sees the spark he’d found in himself, and saw fit to give him another challenge to rise to.