Pandora's Box

[Prudence Warner]

Prue Warner literally waltzed into the dance studio. She'd enjoyed her time teaching at the ABA, but she was just as happy to return to the academy. Sure, she enjoyed working with very talented dancers, but she also loved working with the students here, whose lives weren't revolving around dance class and pointe shoes.

She placed the box she was holding on the floor in the middle of the room and removed the lid, which revealed a another lid with a hole in the centre of it. Inside the box were eight ping-pong balls each with a different thing written on them. She then walked over to the stereo and placed a CD into the disk drive and set it to play the song she wanted when she started class.

She then walked over to the barre and began to stretch her muscles out - as she had done her warm-up on the way to the studio so her muscles were already warmed up and ready to go. She stopped stretching when the students started arriving and smiled her greeting. In the previous years, she had asked all of her students to arrive in a black leotard and pink tights with ballet flats, this year she decided to show a little more faith in her more advanced students and was allowing them to bring their pointe shoes, though they had to prove to her that they were worthy of wearing them. "We're not going to do boring barre exercises today, but one you have your slippers on, please stand at the barre and we'll get started."

---

Calling:
@kate
@lacy
@sierra

Athena Achilles
@running7
Elizabeth Toman
Gretchen Holmes
Katja Eder

[Elizabeth Toman]

Libby ran to her dorm room between classes and quickly changed for dance. Sure, she could have brought her dance clothes and got changed in the gym, but she couldn't decide on the glitter colour that morning, so she decided that she'd just wing it and dorm in between classes.

Once in black leo and pink tights she stood in the bathroom and brushed her hair, sweeping it up into a loose bun, leaving a couple of tendrils down each side of her face. She the looked through her make-up collection and settled on a purple glitter eyeshadow, sparkling lip gloss, a shimmering blush and then found matching glitter spray and spritzed her hair. Ready, she grabbed her dance bag and headed back down to the gym.

In the dance studio, she smiled toward their instructor as she sat on the floor and pulled her ballet flats from her dance bag. Learning to dance in pointe had always interested her, but she couldn't chance injuring her toes, so she never learned. She only took up dance to help with her gymnastics.

Once her slippers were in place, she walked over to the barre, not sure whether she believed the words of no barre exercises. She was a little bored with ballet and hoped that Ms Warner would spice things up a little.

[Athena Achilles]

Athena sat on a bench in the locker rooms of the gymnasium, working on tying the ribbons of her pointe shoes just so. As an ice skater, she had taken ballet since before she could remember, and when she had shown an interest in learning to dance en-pointe, she had been warned by the other dancers the damage that the toes went through when learning the technique, and she had laughed at them. Learning pointe couldn't be any worse than the wear and tear on the feet of breaking in a new pair of skates - and she'd done that often enough over the years.

Picking up her bag, she left the locker room and made her way down to the studio. She gave Ms Warner a hesitant smile as she entered the room and placed her bag on the bench that lined the wall that the door was on. She then walked over to the barre and, placing her hand on the wooden bar, she began to work through a series of plies to warm her muscles up before class started. She had heard that they wouldn't be doing barre exercises, but this was home. The barre was the one place that always remain consistent in her life. Sure, the dance studio changed, but the barre was always the same.

[Katja Eder]

Katja stretched her arms above her head as she tried to figure out where the Dance class was... Before realizing that she had to head to a different building, although she'd already returned to the academic building after running to her room to change for the class. Feeling slightly silly, she left the academic halls and made her way to the gym, looking around for a moment before she spotted the informational sign. After that, it was easy, follow the arrow.

Entering the dance studio, she looked around for a moment, smiling as she spotted the teacher, “Good morning, Ms. Warner.” She turned to glance at the other students already present, trying to get a feel for what was expected, then set down her bag and removed the ballet shoes she'd brought, slightly older, as she hadn't wanted new ones even when she'd started, and that hadn't been more than an afterthought of her parents, to get her away from constantly riding and relax for a little bit.

After she'd put on her slippers, she walked over to the barre, glad that she wasn't completely new to dance, although she nearly was, and yet, she didn't know how she should begin warming up, so she simply stood, observing and trying to get a feel for the class.

[Gretchen Holmes]

Gretchen pulled on her black leotard over her pink tights as she prepared to go to dance. She remembered a time when she'd very seriously wanted to be a ballerina, but as she got older and figured that she was not exactly a naturally gifted dancer, she'd settled for it just being something on the side of riding. That wasn't to say that she still didn't like dancing, the classical music moved her heart and body and she could dance with great precision and timing. However she struggled with finesse, with making her movements flow seamlessly together. Sometimes she stopped too abruptly from a pirouette, sometimes her landings weren't the best, small things that made the biggest difference in separating a good dancer from a great one.

With the required attire on, she put her hair up into a bun before throwing her shoes into a bag and heading for the dance studio. When she got there she saw that some of the other girls were already there. She felt a little intimidated by them, as she was certain they were probably way better dancers than her. One of them was even wearing pointe shoes. Gretchen had her pointe shoes, and had danced very well in them. However she wasn't about to put them on unless her teacher told her to, so instead she pulled on her ballet slippers and walked out onto the floor, doing some stretches to warm up before they began what they were doing.

[Deleted]

With a little skip in her step Caroline made her way to down the steps of the green house and then to the gym, which happened to be on the other side of the circle of houses. She loved dancing and anything that was close to it, which cheerleading fit that bill. Caroline didn’t think any of the cheerleading girls had dance on their schedule so again she would probably be going to the class without her group.

The girl knew a few people from the class but not many as she didn’t always make an effort to get to know everyone’s name. She entered the gymnasium and then the studio to see Ms. Warner and four other girls there already. The class usually only had girls in it, but occasionally a male or two would join, though not yet.

Caroline sat on the floor, opened her bag and pulled out her dance flats. Slipping them on she moved her bag out of the way and walked over to the barre to join the other four girls. The girl smiled and hoped that this was all the bigger the class would be, though she hadn’t always been lucky like that.

[Prudence Warner]

Once a majority of her students had arrived, and the second bell sounded, Prue smiled as she stepped up to the box in the middle of the studio. "Feel free to roll your eyes at me, but we're going to spend the lesson today playing musical statues." She grinned at the girls standing at the barre. "Love or hate the idea, but you will enjoy yourselves." She picked up the box and shook it gently, the balls inside it making noise as they bounced around the confines of the box. "This is Pandora's box. You all know the idea behind Pandora's box? In classical Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on Earth. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create her. So he did, using water and earth. The gods endowed her with many gifts: Athena clothed her, Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo gave her musical ability, and Hermes gave her speech.

"When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora was given a wedding gift of a beautiful jar, with instructions to not open it under any circumstance. Impelled by her curiosity (given to her by the gods), Pandora opened it and all evil contained therein escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the container, but the whole contents had escaped; Apate and all the others, except for one thing that lay at the bottom – the Spirit of Hope, named Elpis. Pandora, deeply saddened by what she had done, feared she would have to face Zeus' wrath, since she had failed her duty. However, Zeus did not punish Pandora because he knew this would happen. There are eight ping pong balls in here, each has a word written on it; pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth, and of course, there is also hope inside the box." She placed the box on the ground again and skipped over to the stereo. "I am sure you all know the rules of musical statues, when the music stops, you freeze? As the music plays and you dance around, I want you to go to the box and select a ball from inside. You will look at what's on the ball and then dance as how you think the ball you have chosen would dance, and then when the music stops, you will freeze in the best representation of that sin or the joy of hope, if that is what you have picked. You are not going to have to sit out though if you move when the music isn't playing." She pushed play and the music of Vivaldi's Four Seasons began to play.

[Elizabeth Toman]

Libby knew that her mouth dropped open when their dance instructor told them they would be playing musical statues. What were they, five? She grumbled under her breath, as she didn't want to annoy the Ms Warner and get kicked out of the class, she needed this class to help keep her in shape for gymnastics. She listened as the woman went on to explain what the box was and she decided it didn't sound so bad after all, as they could dance their own styles.

When the music started, she floated toward the box, and did an arabesque as she reached into it and felt around for a ball. Closing her hand on the cool sphere, she pulled it out and looked at the word written there. She laughed at what she had chosen; Pride, and she spun away from the box as she thought about how to dance like pride. She wiggled her eyebrows and once it seemed that everyone else was dancing, having chosen their own sins, she began to float around the room, dancing in front of everyone, as though she was stealing their spotlight because she was the one the everyone should be looking at.

When the music stopped she went into an arabesque, one arm folded in front of her, the elbow of the other rested on it while her chin rested on her hand in a look at me, aren't I great? pose.

[Athena Achilles]

Athena worked through warming up her muscles as she listened to Ms Warner explain what they would be doing that day. Although the idea of musical statues didn't inspire a lot of enthusiasm, she liked the idea of having to blindly pick out a "sin" and then dance that out.

She followed Libby to the box and once the other girl had moved away, she bent down, stuck her hand in the hole and retrieved a ball. Sloth. She arched her eyebrows as she thought about how to gracefully portray sloth. She figured that she could do it, but she would just dance in slow motion, seeming to be bored with it - and keeping out of the way of the others.

It was difficult as she started, but once she got into the feel of her character, she had fun, falling out of arabesques, slow pirouettes, leaps that more often than not seemed to end with her on the ground looking as though she was about to fall asleep. She had to work her hardest not to crack up laughing a few times, and when the music came to a stop, she did her best dying swan act, as she folded herself up on the floor and seemed to drift off to sleep. Pity, as with her eyes closed, she couldn't see what the others were doing.

[Katja Eder]

Katja listened to the teacher's instructions for the class, although she was already slightly lost as to what they were doing, within the first sentence. However, after the basic history, or mythology, lesson on Pandora's box, Ms. Warner explained the basics, and Katy was relieved to find that she didn't have to ask. The rules seemed basic enough, although she would have to pay more attention to the music than she usually did.

After the teacher had begun the music, Katy walked over to the box she held out, picking one of the ping-pong balls and reading what was written on it, frowning as she considered how she could best portray wrath. However, eventually she realized that no one really cared if she wasn't a ballerina, and she set about making the most of her jerky movements, her face a glare as she moved around, her body stiff as though she was truly angry.

It took her a couple of heartbeats to realize that the music had stopped, and she froze into a position, her shoulders back and head level as she glared at the wall, hands on her hips, as though she was watching something that made her blood boil.