So You Think You Can Dance?

So it's 7:30 am on a Saturday, and I'm pinning a number to a boy's dress shirt. Everywhere I look there are girls in dresses that match the ties of the boys to whom they seem attached. Some grumpy girls run from line to line and keep telling us to move back, then seem impatient when the mass does not immediately squish itself into the space that isn't there because the message hasn't reached the end of the line. Behind a huge black curtain a British man is talking about "heats" and then a silly version of "Sway" begins to blast.
Our line begins to move . . . quickly. Oh, gosh. Why am I here? What on earth was I thinking when I signed that stupid paper?
I take the hand of the boy with the number on his back and paste on a fake smile as we square our shoulders and march out onto the floor of the Marriott Center. I've never felt so awkward as we stop just a few feet away from a woman holding a clipboard. The same synthesized music begins, and I begin to count under my breath: 2, 3, cha-cha-cha . . .
Everything goes well at first. We are not sharp or flashy, but we are on beat. Cross over breaks. Walk around turn. Parallel breaks. Underarm turn. Pull-by. Cross body lead.
Chasse. Whoops. We chase each other back and forth a few times, but when we get back together we are not on beat. My partner can't count (hence the counting under my breath even though we aren't supposed to talk on the floor.) Not good. Luckily, the woman with the clipboard is watching a more flashy couple.
The music ends abruptly and we are left wondering how to stop. We let our hands drop, face the audience, smile (sort of) and allow ourselves to be herded off the floor and yelled at by a few more irritable dancers while the British man says, "Music please . . . heat 7 180 cha-cha."
The rest of the heats go through the awkward motions of the beginning cha-cha, and when we look at the screen, they've posted a list of numbers.
Shoot. That's our number, isn't it?
We are herded back out of the stands and into the tunnel, and then they put us all back on the floor to dance together - some 200 couples all crammed together and trying to fling their arms around.
We go back to the tunnel and get back in line, find out that making it through round one isn't a huge honor because the tunnel is still very crowded, and the whole process repeats.
This time we don't do the chase, but we still get off. While I'm trying to figure out how to get back on beat, I hear my teacher yelling at us, "TWO, THREE, FOUR AND ONE!!!"
Fabulous.
This time, we are not on the list.
I console my partner and exult inwardly. I look at the young kids practicing in the concourse and fully believe they could beat me even if they only had one foot, and I get out of there as fast as I can, grateful to get out of the atmosphere of nerves and awkwardness.
I think I'll stick to the kitchen in the future.