open | your baddest behavior

[cozen]

WHO: Alexandrie, Bastien, Byerly, and their captive audience
WHAT: Mandatory etiquette and dance lessons
WHEN: Justinian 15, 9:45
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: See the OOC post and IC announcement for more information! If you didn't sign up, you can still participate in Parts A and D, and just handwave the other two, without needing to sign up or get an assignment. If you want to do B and C, you can find your own dance partner/seating group OOC, or you can sign up now and we'll dole out new assignments if we get enough latecomers to do so. If you signed up and are missing from the lists when you shouldn't be, I'm sorry and please tell me!

disclaimer: event less fancy than pictured

Seating Assignments
— Table One: Gwenaëlle, Iorveth, Matthias, Athessa
— Table Two: Flint, Ilias, Darras, Med Seller, Yngvi
— Table Three: Julius, Thranduil, Anders, Brienne
— Table Four: Benedict, Colin, Valentine, Six, Derrica
— Table Five: Teren, Salvio, Bartimaeus, Osana
— Table Six: Freddie, Petrana, Kain, Merrill, Silver
— Table Seven: Yseult, Cosima, Steve, Inessa
— Table Eight: Sidony, Fifi, Nell, Fingon
— Table Nine: Thor, Nathaniel H., Solas, Skadi

Dance Partners
— Cosima & Nathaniel H.
— Athessa & Anders
— Teren & Flint
— Freddie & Bartimaeus
— Yseult & Darras
— Nell & Julius
— Merrill & Colin
— Skadi & Benedict
— Gwenaëlle & Solas
— Petrana & Salvio
— Osana & the Medicine Seller
— Sidony & Matthias
— Six & Thranduil
— Brienne & Valentine
— Fifi & Steve
— Thor & Fingon
— Ilias & Iorveth

Comments

[ipseite]

How aptly diplomatic of him, she thinks—because she is, naturally, observing all of her fellow attendees nearly so much as their esteemed tutors. Well, there is a little awkwardness about it, but it has a certain grace: he has not made it impossible for her to take offense and place him squarely in the wrong besides, but she would have to decide to do so, and maneuver accordingly.

(Yes, for those playing at home, it is sometimes exhausting being Petrana de Cedoux.)

So: she does not. She says, “I thought the very same,” graciously, indicating with an agreeable tilt of her chin that she is indeed familiar, and doesn't anticipate being greatly challenged. He is quite right that she is someone who would know how to dance, and there were any number of such skills that she had felt it needful and wise to polish while she still sat within the ambassador's office. It's likely she'd have pursued this one regardless, but she has already been obliged by her work to attend balls and dinners and be turned about the dancefloor; it had not been given the leisure of being a leisure activity.

“If you will lead, mssr, I assure you I shall ably follow.”

[assistente]

Salvio nods, quickly, and with a confidence that might surprise someone more accustomed to his skittishness. There is little in life that he is assured of, and he is no great teacher.

This, he knows. So it with confidence, too, that he lightens the already light pressure that he has on de Cedoux's hand, a gentle touch of fingertips, his arms otherwise loose, flowing. One half-step back, equally light, putting more weight there--and then, as the beat of the staff on the stone comes back around again to the start, they begin.

The forward steps have a litheness to them, slow but almost flirtatious. The toes to the instep, toe to instep, five times across the floor, culminating in a lift on the balls of the feet, and then their hands separate and the right arm comes across the chest as they ease graciously onto one knee, and hold a moment. Respectful, demure, belying the archness of the dance. When they rise again, they separate, turning away from one another and leaning on the left foot--then lean back again, coming together once more, turning to face each other--all of it slow, but light, like the fall of blossoms from a cherry-tree in the spring.

"You learn quickly," Salvio says, in this moment. It is a compliment that he means. de Cedoux has followed along so well, and she continues as the dance turns again, taking them back across the floor in that toe-to-foot step once more.

[ipseite]

Her laugh is easy and her correction light, “I am familiar with this dance.” Not dissimilar in style to the dances she had grown up with, debuted with; it had been the details she'd needed to learn and polish, upon arrival in Thedas. Generally speaking, she's perfectly content to allow someone to believe that they're teaching her—it is more often useful than it isn't—but in this particular context she thinks it benefits them both more to be honest.

To a point, at least. Honesty is not the purpose of this evening, but ah: education is.

A beat later, turning lightly back to his hand, “If you would challenge me, though, I am certain I might earn that compliment.”

She gets the impression that he might actually have the capacity to do so. She'd rather like to see it.

[assistente]

Salvio startles out of his catatonic embarrassment. The moment between the correction and her next words is brief, but how thickly that brevity is padded with penance. Over and over again, he thinks through the few words that they have exchanged, the blissful steps of a dance twisted by his own thoughtlessness. How could he have assumed so much?

Once he has put together the rest of what de Cedoux then says, he is nearly too far gone in silent suffering. And he is still going through the motions as they close out this section of the dance--so her words must first permeate the depths of Salvio's routine and prescribed steps. When they do manage, Salvio breaks the surface of despair with some wild-eyed blinking.

What?

Oh.

"I," he says, somehow managing a stumble even on that single syllable (but never a stumble in his steps, even now), "that, um. I cannot imagine that I would challenge--not to go too far in the, uh, the other-- direction, that I've--"

He looks nervously toward the source of the staff-stomping. A screen of other dancers conceals them from sight. Perhaps it is safe.

"The rhythm is slow," he offers, weakly. They turn from the step progression to the last bow, which Salvio sinks into with some uncertainty--of his partner, not of the movement. "Too slow for the, um. For what I would have in mind. If they were to change the beat... unless you can compensate for, uh, for such a... factor?"