I Just Dance [1/?]
Jun. 25th, 2010 03:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ifeelbetterTitle: I Just Dance [1/?]
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ifeelbetter
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Word Count: 1,501
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own, won't ever, wish I did.
Summary: So You Think You Can Dance AU.
Notes: I don't know why this happened or why I spent so much time on it. I mention a lot of music in this fic, obviously, because of the dances. So far, here's what you need: Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog, Fred Astaire's sand dance in Top Hat [which I couldn't actually find a youtube clip of so that's just the trailer], and, thought I don't specify the version, I was thinking of Placido Domingo's Nessun Dorma.
Title comes from a Fred Astaire quote: "I have no desire to prove anything by it. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance."
I. Before the Auditions.
Jim knocked his head against the brick wall behind him. He had been waiting on line for three hours and he was nowhere near the beginning of the line.
The guy next to him was wearing pink leggings. Jim felt like his eyeballs might explode. He also looked like he may be twelve. Or younger.
The guy gave Jim a big grin, like a kid's toothy Will-You-Be-My-Friend smile, and then kicked his foot up to his ear. They were sitting on the floor at the time so it was a bit more surprising than it would have been if they were standing.
Then the guy bent the leg at the knee. The foot hovered in front of his face. Jim found he couldn't stop staring. His jaw had gone a little slack.
"Pavel Chekov," the kid said, holding his hand out below the dangling foot. Jim shook it because that's what you do with an outstretched hand.
"Jim Kirk," he said because he assumed the guy was introducing himself and not have a sneezing episode.
Pavel seemed satisfied. He straightened the leg in the air and, without Jim being able to pick out the individual movements, he seemed to lift upside down and upwards. He glanced back at Jim and grinned again, the same big toothy grin.
He still had pink leggings. Hell, he even had leg warmers. They were fuzzy.
"Tell me you're not doing hip hop," Jim said.
"No, I am going to do the ballet." Jim nodded. Only a ballerina could get away with that much pink.
"Is it polite if I ask you what style of the dance you will be doing?" asked Pavel. His accent was adorable but Jim could see how it could become grating with too much exposure.
Jim flexed his sneakers, showing the taps nailed in on the toes and heels. Pavel nodded.
"It is hard to be a tap-dancer on this show, I think," he said. It wasn't competitive, simply a statement of fact.
"I've heard."
"This does not concern you?" Pavel sounded genuinely curious.
"Nope."
There was another pause. Pavel did a split upside down.
II. The Auditions
Pavel's solo was set to Nessun Dorma. It was brilliant. He made Mary Murphy cry.
Jim began to feel a bit of panic at that point. He'd never really watched the show. He'd known a couple of people who auditioned multiple times and he had mocked them. He had mocked them, in fact, till the point that they pulled out the big guns: they dared him to try.
Dares worked like a charm on Jim. Especially when it was said in that tone, the one that said, "I would be impressed by you but you're actually going to fail, aren't you?" And that would not fly.
So he had gotten on the line with a devil-may-care attitude and thought, "Well, at least I can say I tried harder than them."
And then Pavel in his pink fucking leggings did that thing in the middle of a jump where his whole body seemed stretched and Jim just felt this shiver up his whole spine.
So, yeah. He didn't think he'd make it. He was willing to count it a victory if he got called back for choreography.
When it was his turn, he tried to keep the nerves out his walk. He tried to stay as nonchalant as possible. He just shuffled onstage.
Cue to music. Tap dancers always go with Sammy Davis Jr or Frank Sinatra so Jim figured he'd just go a level deeper into the thing. He went with Big Mama Thornton. When she sang "Hound Dog," you had to be dead to sit still. Elvis had nothing on her.
He eased into the beginning, mostly because they had told all the dancers not to do that in the application.
Nobody can resist Big Mama Thornton. Nobody. He had really gotten into the thing within a few beats, really feeling the shake of her voice. Adam Shankman was grooving with him, he could see it out of the corner of his eye.
They let him go on a long time, too. He got to the end of the song without Nigel holding that deathly hand up. It was definitely longer than the one minute they were allowed for the audition.
He was held over for choreography. The judges said some shit about how tappers never knew how to do anything besides tap and how it was impossible for a tapper to win the contest.
The wait was fun. Cat pulled him into this camera enclosure to do some kind of interview. The way she explained it, this would be a sort of intro to his routine when they aired the episode. He shrugged and followed her. She was pretty damn hot and he'd always had a thing for that accent.
The questions were leading beyond belief. Cat tried to hold his hand while she asked about losing his father. How she knew about it, Jim could only guess. He certainly hadn't put it on any of his application material. The name could give him away even in a world as disconnected from his father's as this one.
He could see where the interview was going. They would put on the soft focus and the melancholy music. Dancers cry a lot, he knew, and most people expected him to cry.
He answered the questions he could and tried to politely excuse himself from the more dramatic ones. Cat seemed thrilled with the stuff she'd gotten afterward, though, so he figured it would be good enough for TV.
The choreography at the end of the day was fun. If they thought that salsa would throw him--and he could see it in their faces when his group got to perform--they were dead wrong. His partner was a hot mess and she got cut but they gave him that ticket and he was off.
He was on his way to Vegas.
III. Vegas Callbacks, Part One
Spock was an ass. Jim decided that two minutes after meeting him. He did contemporary which Jim had always understood to be ballet without the stick up its ass. Spock proved him wrong.
They could have met under better conditions, it's true.
Jim had a lot of nervous energy to work off when he got to his hotel room. He wasn't used to living above basement level so he didn't think twice about putting on his tap-sneakers and soft-shoeing a bit.
Spock called management to complain. Apparently, they didn't move quickly enough for him because Jim was only just answering the room phone when there was a knock on his door. He hung up on the hotel clerk and went to the door.
"You are a disruption," said Spock, wearing a neon green bathrobe over his pajamas. He didn't even introduce himself. He just stood there with his hands on his hips.
"I ... am?" Jim shrugged.
Spock pointed to his shoes. "I demand you stop doing that."
"I'm not doing anything." Jim thought for a moment. "Wait, you want me to stop talking to you? But you knocked on my door."
"I demand you stop making absurdly loud noises," Spock clarified.
"I don't think I was making absurdly loud noises," said Jim and then, because he was who he was, he leered. "I could start, though."
Spock glowered. "Just stop tapping." He swept away, his green bathrobe trailing behind him like a cape.
Jim still didn't know his name the next morning when he saw him stretching in a stairwell. He was wearing all gray and black then and every subsequent time Jim saw him. The neon green bathrobe existed, though. Jim was entirely sure he had seen it.
He heard his name for the first time when he was called to do his solo.
The song was Rufus Wainwright's "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk." It was so weird, after the couple of chance encounters they had had, to see him dance to a song like that. For a man who, as Jim would learn over their friendship, allowed himself so few foibles, it was an oddly apt choice of song. The mixture of his precision and the song's lazy decadence was like apples and peanut butter: no one expected it to work so well.
They both survived that first day, when a quarter of the people were sent home.
When Jim got back to his room that night, he passed an old fashioned cigarette stand in the hallway. It had the sand in it and everything. The Fred Astaire reference was too good to pass up.
He hauled the whole stand back into his room and poured it out on the floor. He knew the "No Strings" routine from Top Hat backwards and forwards and imagining Spock as Ginger Rogers was too good.
Spock didn't show up to complain and he didn't hear from management so he counted this as another victory.
continue
Author:
ifeelbetterPairing: Kirk/Spock
Word Count: 1,501
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own, won't ever, wish I did.
Summary: So You Think You Can Dance AU.
Notes: I don't know why this happened or why I spent so much time on it. I mention a lot of music in this fic, obviously, because of the dances. So far, here's what you need: Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog, Fred Astaire's sand dance in Top Hat [which I couldn't actually find a youtube clip of so that's just the trailer], and, thought I don't specify the version, I was thinking of Placido Domingo's Nessun Dorma.
Title comes from a Fred Astaire quote: "I have no desire to prove anything by it. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance."
I. Before the Auditions.
Jim knocked his head against the brick wall behind him. He had been waiting on line for three hours and he was nowhere near the beginning of the line.
The guy next to him was wearing pink leggings. Jim felt like his eyeballs might explode. He also looked like he may be twelve. Or younger.
The guy gave Jim a big grin, like a kid's toothy Will-You-Be-My-Friend smile, and then kicked his foot up to his ear. They were sitting on the floor at the time so it was a bit more surprising than it would have been if they were standing.
Then the guy bent the leg at the knee. The foot hovered in front of his face. Jim found he couldn't stop staring. His jaw had gone a little slack.
"Pavel Chekov," the kid said, holding his hand out below the dangling foot. Jim shook it because that's what you do with an outstretched hand.
"Jim Kirk," he said because he assumed the guy was introducing himself and not have a sneezing episode.
Pavel seemed satisfied. He straightened the leg in the air and, without Jim being able to pick out the individual movements, he seemed to lift upside down and upwards. He glanced back at Jim and grinned again, the same big toothy grin.
He still had pink leggings. Hell, he even had leg warmers. They were fuzzy.
"Tell me you're not doing hip hop," Jim said.
"No, I am going to do the ballet." Jim nodded. Only a ballerina could get away with that much pink.
"Is it polite if I ask you what style of the dance you will be doing?" asked Pavel. His accent was adorable but Jim could see how it could become grating with too much exposure.
Jim flexed his sneakers, showing the taps nailed in on the toes and heels. Pavel nodded.
"It is hard to be a tap-dancer on this show, I think," he said. It wasn't competitive, simply a statement of fact.
"I've heard."
"This does not concern you?" Pavel sounded genuinely curious.
"Nope."
There was another pause. Pavel did a split upside down.
II. The Auditions
Pavel's solo was set to Nessun Dorma. It was brilliant. He made Mary Murphy cry.
Jim began to feel a bit of panic at that point. He'd never really watched the show. He'd known a couple of people who auditioned multiple times and he had mocked them. He had mocked them, in fact, till the point that they pulled out the big guns: they dared him to try.
Dares worked like a charm on Jim. Especially when it was said in that tone, the one that said, "I would be impressed by you but you're actually going to fail, aren't you?" And that would not fly.
So he had gotten on the line with a devil-may-care attitude and thought, "Well, at least I can say I tried harder than them."
And then Pavel in his pink fucking leggings did that thing in the middle of a jump where his whole body seemed stretched and Jim just felt this shiver up his whole spine.
So, yeah. He didn't think he'd make it. He was willing to count it a victory if he got called back for choreography.
When it was his turn, he tried to keep the nerves out his walk. He tried to stay as nonchalant as possible. He just shuffled onstage.
Cue to music. Tap dancers always go with Sammy Davis Jr or Frank Sinatra so Jim figured he'd just go a level deeper into the thing. He went with Big Mama Thornton. When she sang "Hound Dog," you had to be dead to sit still. Elvis had nothing on her.
He eased into the beginning, mostly because they had told all the dancers not to do that in the application.
Nobody can resist Big Mama Thornton. Nobody. He had really gotten into the thing within a few beats, really feeling the shake of her voice. Adam Shankman was grooving with him, he could see it out of the corner of his eye.
They let him go on a long time, too. He got to the end of the song without Nigel holding that deathly hand up. It was definitely longer than the one minute they were allowed for the audition.
He was held over for choreography. The judges said some shit about how tappers never knew how to do anything besides tap and how it was impossible for a tapper to win the contest.
The wait was fun. Cat pulled him into this camera enclosure to do some kind of interview. The way she explained it, this would be a sort of intro to his routine when they aired the episode. He shrugged and followed her. She was pretty damn hot and he'd always had a thing for that accent.
The questions were leading beyond belief. Cat tried to hold his hand while she asked about losing his father. How she knew about it, Jim could only guess. He certainly hadn't put it on any of his application material. The name could give him away even in a world as disconnected from his father's as this one.
He could see where the interview was going. They would put on the soft focus and the melancholy music. Dancers cry a lot, he knew, and most people expected him to cry.
He answered the questions he could and tried to politely excuse himself from the more dramatic ones. Cat seemed thrilled with the stuff she'd gotten afterward, though, so he figured it would be good enough for TV.
The choreography at the end of the day was fun. If they thought that salsa would throw him--and he could see it in their faces when his group got to perform--they were dead wrong. His partner was a hot mess and she got cut but they gave him that ticket and he was off.
He was on his way to Vegas.
III. Vegas Callbacks, Part One
Spock was an ass. Jim decided that two minutes after meeting him. He did contemporary which Jim had always understood to be ballet without the stick up its ass. Spock proved him wrong.
They could have met under better conditions, it's true.
Jim had a lot of nervous energy to work off when he got to his hotel room. He wasn't used to living above basement level so he didn't think twice about putting on his tap-sneakers and soft-shoeing a bit.
Spock called management to complain. Apparently, they didn't move quickly enough for him because Jim was only just answering the room phone when there was a knock on his door. He hung up on the hotel clerk and went to the door.
"You are a disruption," said Spock, wearing a neon green bathrobe over his pajamas. He didn't even introduce himself. He just stood there with his hands on his hips.
"I ... am?" Jim shrugged.
Spock pointed to his shoes. "I demand you stop doing that."
"I'm not doing anything." Jim thought for a moment. "Wait, you want me to stop talking to you? But you knocked on my door."
"I demand you stop making absurdly loud noises," Spock clarified.
"I don't think I was making absurdly loud noises," said Jim and then, because he was who he was, he leered. "I could start, though."
Spock glowered. "Just stop tapping." He swept away, his green bathrobe trailing behind him like a cape.
Jim still didn't know his name the next morning when he saw him stretching in a stairwell. He was wearing all gray and black then and every subsequent time Jim saw him. The neon green bathrobe existed, though. Jim was entirely sure he had seen it.
He heard his name for the first time when he was called to do his solo.
The song was Rufus Wainwright's "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk." It was so weird, after the couple of chance encounters they had had, to see him dance to a song like that. For a man who, as Jim would learn over their friendship, allowed himself so few foibles, it was an oddly apt choice of song. The mixture of his precision and the song's lazy decadence was like apples and peanut butter: no one expected it to work so well.
They both survived that first day, when a quarter of the people were sent home.
When Jim got back to his room that night, he passed an old fashioned cigarette stand in the hallway. It had the sand in it and everything. The Fred Astaire reference was too good to pass up.
He hauled the whole stand back into his room and poured it out on the floor. He knew the "No Strings" routine from Top Hat backwards and forwards and imagining Spock as Ginger Rogers was too good.
Spock didn't show up to complain and he didn't hear from management so he counted this as another victory.
continue
