“Let me show it to you first before I teach it to you, okay?” I tell Hallie.
She’s just finished warm-ups, stretching, and conditioning, and is happy to sit on the sidelines for a ninety-second break. I give her my phone so she can control the music.
“If you check out the Notes app, you’ll see the entire breakdown of the choreography,” I explain. “You can follow along, so you can see where, for example, I spin around on my butt, but you’ll actually do a wolf turn.”
“Got it,” she says, peering at the screen.
“And when I do a switch leap with a full turn and it sucks, you’ll do a switch leap with a full turn but make it look good,” I say in the same matter-of-fact tone, hoping she’ll laugh.
She snickers. “Understood.”
I unzip my hoodie and kick off my sneakers. They’ll only get in the way. I hear the bars creaking on the other side of the gym; Ryan is doing pull-ups. His muscles bulge cartoonishly. I force myself to look away.
“Ready?” she asks, once I’ve struck the starting pose on the floor.
“Ready!” I say.
“Jazz Fling” fills the room. To the extent that I can, I perform the hell out of the routine with the same passion and intensity I used to give the judges. I need to sell Hallie on this routine. It strikes me—while upside down, midway through a cartwheel we’re all kindly pretending is Hallie’s third tumbling pass—that the thrill of this performance isn’t so far off from the adrenaline high I used to get from doing my own routine during competition. Maybe there can be real joy on the sidelines as a coach and a choreographer. When I’m finished, I retreat toward her, trying desperately to catch my breath.
“Okay, cool, teach me,” Hallie says, bouncing up to her feet.
“You like it?” I ask.
“Well…” She fidgets, scratching the back of one calf with the other foot. She looks at me with a shy gaze. “It’s different. I’ll give it a try.”
She’s clearly skeptical, but not strong-willed enough to challenge my judgment. I’m relieved she doesn’t reject the routine flat out, but I know I can’t let my expression waver. The coach-gymnast relationship is sacred and built on a concrete foundation of respect and trust; she can’t catch on to the fact that I’m anxious and have feelings that can be hurt, just like anyone else.
“Whew, okay. Let’s break it down from the top. Start here, a couple feet out from this corner,” I instruct, pointing to the spot in which she needs to stand.
From the other side of the floor, I see Ryan watching us with a smile.
I walk Hallie through the choreography step by step, focusing on teaching her the broad strokes of every move. We can sharpen each motion later on, once she’s gotten the hang of the routine. She hasn’t warmed up her tumbling yet, so she goes for lazy, easy passes, like a round-off, back handspring, back tuck instead of the real deal. With Hallie toning down her skills and me performing to the fullest extent of my abilities, the playing field is almost level.
She picks up the routine fairly quickly, delighting in the creative combinations I’ve thrown together for her. Not everything runs so smoothly, though. I planned a switch ring leap connected to a switch leap with a full turn. A switch leap involves scissoring your legs back and forth, so you hit both a left split and a right split in midair before landing; each variation is tricky on its own, but the two moves back-to-back are even more complicated. That’s the point, of course—the more difficult the series is, the higher the payoff is from the judges. Hallie fumbles the combination three times in a row. It doesn’t matter how powerful or energetic she is—the move requires an absurd amount of precision.
“You have to use your arms for momentum in between the two leaps so you can have enough height on the second to make the full rotation,” I explain.
She exhales and tries it again. It’s sloppy, and she knows it. The moment her feet touch the floor, she shoots me a frustrated glance.
“More height,” I remind her, demonstrating the way she needs to swing her arms. “Try it again.”
She takes a few steps backward and screws up her face. I can tell she’s trying to visualize the move in front of her. She sashays into the combination, but the series looks more like a jumble of flailing limbs than real gymnastics. If we had a stronger relationship at this point, I’d feel comfortable pushing her to work through it. But right now, I don’t want to bring down her mood. Today, her confidence is worth more than the difficulty value of that leap series.
“Or maybe we put something else in that spot,” I suggest. “Moving on…”
When we make it through the end of the routine, I give her a celebratory high five.
“Let’s do it again,” she says, bouncing up on her toes. “For real, this time, to music.”
“You think you have all that memorized already?” I ask.
I know she’s good, but she can’t be that good.
“Not all of it, but most,” she says proudly.
“Okay,” I say, chuckling. “One more walk-through together, then you do it by yourself for real.”
We repeat the choreography. This time, she deftly slides into most of the right moves, though she does spend half the routine with her neck craned toward me. Her switch leap series is a flop, but she pushes through to make it toward the final tumbling pass and the simple last bit of dance. (By the time you hit the fourth tumbling pass, you’re flat-out exhausted. Even waving to a crowd cheering your name feels impossible. So I kept her last few motions easy.)
Ryan drops down from the bars. “How’s it going over there?” he calls, wiping sweat from his brow.
“Good!” Hallie and I shout at the same time.
“Jinx, you owe me a soda,” she says quickly. As Ryan approaches, she lowers her voice. “Not that I even drink soda, but, you know.”
“I’ll get you a Gatorade,” I reply.
“Can I see how it’s going?” Ryan asks.
“What do you think, Hallie? Are you ready for music?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says, jutting out her chin. “Let’s do this.”
She scrambles over to the starting spot, settles into the first pose, then peeks back at me, as if to ensure she’s doing it right. I nod and turn on the music. On her own for the first time, her performance is rough and uneven. She nails certain sections of choreography, though I’d still like to tighten up the way she moves and performs; other bits, though, she stumbles through, or forgets entirely. I watch her face freeze when she realizes she has no idea how to transition from upright and standing to down on the floor for the wolf turn. She doesn’t have enough time to figure it out; the music has already moved on. So she spasms and drops to the floor, shouting an apology as she goes.
“That’s part of it?” Ryan deadpans.
“Yeah, doesn’t it look great?” I joke back.
Hallie flits through the rest of the routine, shouting a dramatic “Ta-da!” as she hits the final pose.
“Needs some work,” Ryan suggests kindly.
“But we’re on the right track,” I insist.
“I’ll run through it twenty more times today,” Hallie promises.