Let’s get one thing straight: I have the natural rhythm of a blind and deaf cockatoo that’s just been given an exorbitant amount of LSD. I don’t know why, but when I try and feel the music, I end up looking less like Chris Brown at the VMAs and more like Taylor Swift at the VMAs. There’s a lot of unnecessary hand motions and bopping up and down. So, I decided to suck up my pride, cobble together a sense of altruism and dive head first into the Rik-a-Sha dance club here at USC.
OK, I’ll try to avoid all Shakira and hip-truthfulness references for the duration of our time together. Practice started at 10 p.m. and went until midnight, which gave me a sense as to how dedicated these girls are. We must have walked by the practice room a good three times. Surely it’s not the one with all windows to display my abysmal coordination to all of Strom, I thought. Oh yeah, it is.
Kristin Mobley, whose sister started Rik-a-Sha back in 2006 and passed the family torch so to speak, greeted me. She told me we’d be starting choreography on the next segment of their Halloween mash-up that would be performed on October 28 at the Russell House. After a couple of stretches with serious butterflies in my stomach, it was time to get underway. Things started off easy with some simple steps and pops, but any shred of confidence I had was quickly ripped up and tossed out the window when a Beyoncé-esque slide move blew out my hamstring like an old rubber band. Needless to say, this was of much entertainment value to the girls of Rik-a-Sha and my fellow photographer, but in that Gamecock tradition, I soldiered on.
I did my best to keep up, but just “walking” through the moves was difficult. Putting it all to music at an even faster pace left me floundering. The final nail in the coffin came when an attempted shoulder roll resulted in quite an alarming crack from my neck and a genuine sense of concern from the girls. I took a seat, thankful for a break but also thankful that I could finally see the routine from a third person perspective.
They were so smooth. Every transition was so fluid. Mobley said membership numbers have been dwindling the past couple years. I’ll admit I was a little surprised to be practicing with just six others. But I have to admit, that’s what made it fun. After the first couple minutes, it didn’t seem like I was dancing with a bunch of strangers but with friends. Honestly. Not once did I feel like I was being made fun of or laughed at, and at no point did I feel like my lack of skill was a problem to anyone. Renique Richberg, Rik-a-Sha’s chief operations officer, summed it up best in her first email to me: “You don’t need any rhythm, by the way; it’s all about the fun.”
