The music is everything I hoped it would be.
A mashup I spent nights perfecting—Summer Walker's voice layered over traditional Japanese instrumentation, the collision of ancient and modern creating something that feels likeme. Like chaos contained. Like violence made beautiful.
The opening is slow.
Controlled.
I move through positions with deliberate precision—classical ballet foundations given an edge by the way I hold my body, the tension in my muscles, the coiled power waiting to be released. My arms extend, fingers reaching toward something invisible, searching for something that doesn't exist yet.
Longing.
That's the first emotion.
The desperate, aching need for something you can't name.
The panels of my costume shift as I move, dark fabric catching the light, revealing hints of the burgundy beneath. My reflection multiplies in my peripheral vision—mirrors positioned at the edges of the stage, creating the illusion of infinite versions of myself, all searching, all reaching, all alone.
The music builds.
The beat intensifies.
And I reach for my blades.
The draw is choreographed—part of the performance, part of the story—but the weight of steel in my hands isreal. The familiar grip, the perfect balance, the knowledge that these weapons have saved my life more times than I can count.
Now they're going to save my future too.
The first blade arc is a statement.
I am not what you expected.
I am not soft or safe or easily contained.
I am danger made beautiful.
I am violence given form.
The Japanese influences emerge now—the precise footwork of traditional sword dance woven through my movements, the formal positions corrupted and transformed by ballet's fluidity. My blades cut through the air in patterns that are both aesthetic and functional, each slice capable of opening a throat if the target were real instead of empty space.
One-two-three-four.
The counting continues beneath everything—a baseline rhythm that keeps me grounded even as I push my body harder, faster, further.
My muscles are screaming.
Already.
Days of preparation weren't enough to fully recover from weeks of deprivation, and the technical demands of this piece are brutal. Every extension, every leap, every spin with blades in hand pushes me closer to the edge of what I'm physically capable of.
Don't stop.
Don't falter.
Give them everything.
Give them so much they can't look away.
The music shifts—Summer Walker's voice rising, the emotion in the lyrics bleeding through the traditional instrumentation. The story is changing now, moving from isolation into something else.
