SURREY, BC – According to sources in attendance at Simpkins Dance Academy’s annual all-ages showcase last Saturday, a 12-year-old dancer tossed her head irreverently to the side, and winked coquettishly into a silent, unmoving audience of parents.
The move, meticulously choreographed by studio maven and retired ballerina Helen Simpkins, reportedly occurred during minute four of Train’s seminal track ‘Drops of Jupiter.’
The spandex-clad, bedazzled child in question was coated in an adult woman’s monthly allotment of makeup, and had originally entered the stage with a group of harrowed, flailing ‘comets’, ages 8-12. The celestial projectiles gyrated counter-clockwise in what the complementary fifteen page program lyrically dubs a “meteor shower” before breaking into a regrettable approximation of hip hop dancing, and spreading out to give the audience an unimpeded view of the sassy wink and hair-toss.
Needless to say, the fans loved it:
“Look, I’m here every year. I have to be here every year,” said local parent Doug Lyman during the half-hour intermission held at the showcase’s three-hour mark. “But even if grim familial duty weren’t forcing me to come back, I would still be here for Simpkins’ choreographic genius.”
“That wink,” raved someone’s mom Bridget Kyle, “captured that girl right on the awkward fulcrum between childhood and sweaty, terrified pre-adolescence. Having her project all that rehearsed, inauthentic confidence at everyone’s parents and grandparents (in an oddly sexual maneuver the meaning of which she doesn’t understand but can execute better than any actual dance move) is textbook Simpkins Academy!”
At press time, it was time for the boy with long hair – Levi? Is it Levi? – to do his tapdancing.
