1. Name: Vania L.<br />Task: Writing a narrative story<br />The Winner<br />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. <br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />“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.<br />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.<br />“Oh, hey, what’s up?” he said behind the door.<br />“Ah, just give this to your mom,” I handed him a USB.<br />“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.<br />“Well, okay,” I said in a peculiar way.<br />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. <br />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.<br />As I heard the sound of footsteps, I closed the video immediately and pretended that I was doing nothing there.<br />“Have you sent it?” asked the boy calmly.<br />“Oh, umm.. I’m about to send it now. Can you please show me which destination file should I send this to?” I asked.<br />“Just drop it in the desktop. Oh, I’m Chuck by the way.<br />“Ah, Jim. Nice to meet you, Chuck,” I said as I took my USB and stood up.<br />“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.<br />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.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />“How are we going to join the competition now?” asked Mike desperately.<br />“We still have to do that, guys,” convinced the other members.<br />“Let’s open an audition for temporary member!” Lisa suggested.<br />“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.<br />“Tony’s right, we have limited time. We have to figure something else out,” I said.<br />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.<br />“Alright guys, let’s meet coach Gina after school,” I smiled.<br />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.<br />“Are you sure? That creepy anti-social guy?” asked Jack.<br />“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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />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. <br />“Yeah, you were doing great!” I said.<br />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.<br />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. <br />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. <br />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. <br />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.<br />