Free Dance-off! by Harriet Castor Page A

for them, but then Mrs Weaver said, “Felicity! Your group next,” so we grabbed our headsets, scrambled to our feet, and all at once we were on!

Step, kick, shoulder, shoulder – hands up, turn around…
    As the familiar music blared, I concentrated as hard as I possibly could. Just getting my hands and feet working in the right order felt as complicated as conducting a whole orchestra!
    And – miracle of miracles – I made it through the first half of the routine without a mistake. But when I moved to the front for my solo, it was as if someone had suddenly pressed the‘Erase’ button in my head – I went completely blank! For one dreadful, goose-pimply moment I thought I was just going to stand there like a lemon. But then I found myself repeating two of the steps from the chorus section, over and over. OK, it wasn’t the most exciting solo in the world but, boy, was I relieved! I felt like a goalie in a football match who’d just made a really tricky save.
    Fliss’s solo went down a storm, and no one else forgot a thing. At the end there was a big round of applause.
    “Were we hot, or what?” panted Frankie, as we went to sit down again.
    I was hot all right – but maybe not in the way Frankie meant!
    Now that my nerves had totally disappeared I really enjoyed watching the other groups. When it came to the end I’d even forgotten about the competition bit, and that Lorna and Sean were going to pick a winner.
    It was only when they left the hall for a fewminutes to talk about it in private that I started getting excited.
    “All hold hands!” commanded Frankie. I grabbed Lyndz on one side of me, and reached up to Fliss on the other.
    As Lorna and Sean came back into the hall, Frankie sent hand-squeezes back and forth along our line like a Mexican wave. I held my breath. I realised that, even though it’d made me so nervous, I really wanted to win, so we’d have another chance to do our routine.
    “You all did brilliantly,” said Sean. “Why did you have to make our lives so difficult by being so good? We nearly came to blows out there trying to choose a winner!”
    Everyone laughed.
    “And, in fact,” Sean went on, “we’re going to cheat a bit, because we’ve decided we’d like two groups to perform at the party tonight. A winner and a runner-up, if you like.”
    “So, let’s get on with the announcements,” said Lorna. “The winner is… the RnB group.That’s Ryan and company, isn’t it? Well done, guys, it was a brilliant routine!”
    I dropped Lyndz and Fliss’s hands to clap along with everyone else. My heart had sunk into my trainers. It made me feel mean, because Ryan and his mates had been really good.
    “But that’s not all,” said Sean, “because we simply couldn’t let the party miss out on a bit of hand-jive…”
    Hand-jive? I thought dimly. Who did hand-jive apart from us?
    “So,” Sean was saying, “Sleepoverbabes – will you strut your stuff for us tonight as well?”
    “Yeaaaah!” Frankie punched the air.
    “Super-coo-el!” Kenny shouted.
    “And I think you should teach everyone the moves,” said Lorna. “You’ll be a big hit!”
    And you know what? Lorna was right. We were the biggest hit, I reckon, in the history of Cuddington Primary.
    The party was totally fab. The school hall looked amazing. The caretaker, as well as building the stage at one side of the hall, had rigged up coloured lights and an enormous mirror ball which spun round as the music played, reflecting flashes of orange and green and red over what ended up being a scrum of dancing bodies.
    Hang on, though – I’m getting ahead of myself, cos to start with no one danced much at all. There were loads of people there: pupils and teachers, mums and dads, kid brothers and sisters, grans and grandpas – all ages from the babies to the wrinklies.
    “Wow, lots of people have dressed up,” Lyndz said as the hall started filling up, with everyone congregating round the food and drink