Song is 'Over My Head (Cable Car)' by The Fray. Yeah… sorry for the, erm… imaginative choreography. Just thought it would be something cool if they actually did it on the show. :D
Emma's POV
We were first on. Will was backstage, prepping the kids for each new number, so I was in the audience with a camcorder in my hand. Front row, of course. Gillian was supposed to be in the seat beside me, but she was nowhere to be seen. The Arts Center was packed, with only some of the corner balcony seats left empty. The announcer, a tall man wearing a black suit, stepped up to a mic on the front of the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the 28th Annual National Show Choir Competition!"
The theatre erupted in boisterous applause. With the camera, I turned to face the audience and saw people waving poster-board signs with the names of the six choirs competing drawn on them in colorful marker.
"There'll be six groups performing for you today, with their members ranging from fourteen to eighteen years of age, coming from all over America! So, without further ado, I present to you our first group of competitors, all the way from Lima, Ohio, McKinley High's New Directions!"
This time, the whole building was swallowed in applause, and I hoped the kids backstage could hear it. I could envision them back there, waiting with their backs to the audience, ready to open with 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'. My head was buzzing, and I hoped they could feel the same excitement and anticipation as I did. This was their final performance… a final chance.
Mercedes knocked her solo right out of the park. From my front row seat, I could already see the gleam in the judges' eyes. There was no way the other Glee Clubs could measure up to this. We got through Kurt and Quinn's 'Touch Me', Artie doing 'Sound of Settling' and Tommy singing John Mayer's 'Say', without a single glitch. After each number there was wild applause and screaming and whistling. They were going to win… there was no denying that. After 'Say' they did a quick costume change from black silk dresses and shirts paired with dark denim to sky blue sweaters of varying shapes, sizes, and designs with white pants.
Finn's solo was the most heavily choreographed number in the setlist, the hardest to rehearse, and the one that was most likely to get screwed up. Rachel choreographed it, featuring the club's six trained dancers (herself, Santana, Brittany, Mike, Matt, and Kurt.) The funny thing was that Finn didn't actually have to move at all during the song.
It was the make it or break it moment of the whole show. I held my breath as the curtains opened again revealing the five people that weren't a part of the choreography on a single riser off to the right, Finn standing on a black pedestal on the middle of the stage, and our dancers, crouched with their heads down in a line at the front. The music started…
"I never knew,
I never knew that everything was fallin' through
That everyone I knew was waiting on a cue
To turn and run when all I needed was the truth.
But that's how it's gonna be
It's comin' down to nothing more than apathy
I'd rather run the other way than stay and see
The smoke and who's still standing when it clears…"
For most of the song, the dancers were paired together: Rachel with Mike, Santana with Matt, and Brittany with Kurt. They'd included nearly every form of dance that was known by the company: it started off with a ballet routine, which morphed into a flowing waltz sort of thing, and even a short interval of a tango. The whole thing was very diverse; something we'd been hoping would catch the judges' eyes.
"And then, I become part of the past,
I'm becoming the part that don't last
I'm losing you and it's effortless…"
As the tempo slowed, the girls, Mike, and Matt sank into the shadowed wings of the stage, leaving Kurt alone in front of Finn. The drum beat picked back up, bringing with it the volume of Finn's voice and my inability to breath. The moment was coming up… if we were going to mess anything up, this would be it.
Kurt had choreographed this part himself (it all had to be approved by Rachel though, of course.) It had originally been for him, Santana, and Brittany, because they were the three gymnasts in the group, but (after a long, loud, grating argument with Rachel) it was decided that it should be a solo thing.
It was like a cross between a dance and a gymnastics routine. The beginning was a complicated, backbreaking series of handsprings and flips and a bunch of other amazing things that you'd never think an eighteen year old boy capable of doing. It still left me gaping, every time I saw it (even though I'd seen it countless times in its rehearsal stages.)
Kurt was so precise in his movements that he pulled the first part of without a hitch. He landed on his feet and segued into an elaborate moment of ballet turns that made it look like he was floating.
And then it came. I tell you, that boy had to have an inordinate amount of trust in the stage hands to pull this one off. First, the musical cue,
"I won't let it go down
'Till we torch it ourselves…"
And then from a series of wires attached to the stage beams, someone backstage released a metal gymnast's bar over the front half of the stage, just within Kurt's reach.
This was also the whole reason that every time we'd rehearsed this number, we had to be in the gym. The bar here was hanging by some sort of clear material so it looked like it was just levitating there, which made the whole thing even more spectacular.
Glee Club'd never tried anything quite like this before, and the only way Kurt had convinced Mr. Schuster to let him do it was through written records of ten years of gymnastics class, and a talk with his instructor. None of the other groups were bound to have something like this.
"Hanging above as the canyon comes between…"
Simultaneously, another curtain lifted, revealing a background of, you guessed it, a canyon, and Kurt spun and launched himself into the air, grabbing hold of the bar with a single hand, and propelling the lower half of his body upwards, catching the clear cords with one leg and wrapping it around him. The whole audience collectively gasped, but I just smiled knowingly. If he could get this next part right, we'd be out of the woods soon.
Guided by Finn's voice, Kurt spun back out of the restrains, letting go of the bar for a split second (which still scared the heck out of me every time he did it,) falling, and catching it under his knee as he went back down. With a swift hand movement, he tugged one of the ropes by his head to bring the bar forward as he trapeized through the air, somehow finding the momentum to get himself upright. Then, he stood up, perched on the bar, not holding on to anything, as it moved towards the front of the stage, causing the audience to gasp again. I just bit by lip, praying, like I'd done every single time, that he didn't fall.
I was almost sure that no one except for me noticed him slipping on the simple little bungee-type contraption, he did it so smoothly. As Finn belted out the ending, Kurt and the bar got raised upwards until he was higher than the balconies.
And then, as the final note was hit, he jumped.
Well, I suppose that's putting it a little bluntly.
He did a beautiful swan dive straight towards the stage, which actually made a couple of people behind me scream. But, right as he was about to hit the wood and die an untimely death (I'm kidding, he actually pulled it off perfectly,) the rope caught him and he finished his act in the same crouched position as he had started it.
The music stopped, and the crowd went absolutely wild.
Before, we were going to win. Now, we were going to win.
It really was an amazing feeling, and I wasn't even on the stage.
