Karve Week 8- First Place

As a competitive dancer, I have always been taught to imagine getting first place in class. It makes us work harder and keeps us on track. However, at competition, we are taught to forget about it. It makes us nervous and mess up our dances because we want all of our hard work to pay off. In my 8 years of competing, this strategy has worked a handful of times. A handful of times, they have announced my team's name for first place. One thing that they have never announced my team for is the highest score of a competition. The day started around 11:30 am, which luckily wasn't too early. This year, competitions are different. Normally all of your dances are spread out throughout the weekend, but because of COVID, each dance studio does all of their dances alone and at once in a 2 hour time period. Because of this, we got to warm up as a studio. Post warmup, we all received a pep talk from our teachers. I know the pep talks like the back of my hand, because they are basically the same every year. In the pep talk, we are reminded to forget about the award ceremony that will take place after the chaos of the next two hours. Fast forward to our second dance of the day, Contemporary. The dance is called "In Your Arms," and it's a creepy remix of the upbeat 80s song "I Just Died in Your Arms." I don't remember a ton of the two hour time window, but I do remember what happened right as we got off of stage and were sprinting back to the dressing room for our quick change. We all saw one of our teachers jumping up and down, saying it was the best she's ever seen it. She did not choreograph this dance, but she is known for her honesty. Meaning, that if a dance is bad, she will tell you to your face that it was bad. In the dressing room, we see our choreographer, who proceeds to tell us that she cried (tears of joy, of course). Again this is a huge deal, because she isn't one to cry like that. After we finish the rest of our dances, it's time for the loved, yet dreaded, award ceremony. Now is the time where we can remember what we came here to do. We came to get the high platinum (similar to gold in the olympics, but multiple people can recieve it). We came to win first overall, but the thought of winning the whole thing, had not even crossed our minds. They announced that our contemporary got the high platinum, and our whole studio (the only ones there because of COVID) cheered. Normally, we would know how we placed at this point, but because of COVID the high scores and overalls would be live streamed at the end of the night. We decided to have a little watch party at one of our teammates' houses. Throughout the live stream, we would all cheer when a dance from our studio placed, then immediately try to quiet each other down to hear the rest. After what feels like a lifetime full of anxiety and excitement, they finally get to our category. This is the moment where we know if we finally won first place after all of our hard work. They announce our ballet for 7th. They announce our jazz for 3rd. They announce the only other dance to receive a high platinum for 2nd, and in that moment we knew. They announce our contemporary for 1st. We all cheer, scream, laugh, and celebrate, but they have yet to announce another thing that we are in the running for.
The highest score of the competition. We sit and wait patiently for the announcer to get to that part of the awards ceremony. Normally, with all the studios present, in person, they would play the song of the highest scoring dance, and all of the dancers would stand up and cheer, run to the front of the stage, and accept their award. This year they simply announced the name of dance. We hear her say "In Your Arms!", and then we hear immediate screaming from us. All of our hard work had finally paid off.