Step. Shuffle. Step. Pop, lock, down on one knee, spin, and look at the audience. Cocky grin. Blow the hair out of your eyes. Get up, and do a body wave.

I follow the motions of dance as smoothly as I can, making sure to keep my breathing steady and my arms as straight as an arrow. This is already the tenth time I've filmed this dance for my audition to Seoul Academy of Performing Arts, and I don't think I can take another five minute routine without being really sweaty and gross. As it is, my body is already soaked and I've had to change my shirt so pit stains wouldn't shock the judges. Twice.

I end my dance with a flip that lands me on my knees and slowly breath out as the music ends. I'll have to play the tape back again, but I think I got it this time. Getting up, I look straight into the camera.

"Again, my name is Choi Mina and I am 17 years old. Thank you for your consideration."

I bow deeply, and calmly walk over to the camera to make it stop recording. Only then do I start to pant and wheeze like I ran 5 miles in the blistering sun. I crawl over to the corner of the room where I keep my stuff and grab my water bottle, drinking heavily and spilling water all down the corners of my mouth. I'm a dancer, but that doesn't mean I'm graceful.

I plant my back and against the wall and slowly start to slide down, taking in the bland,peeling beige walls as I go. One huge window that reveals an artfully polluted lake filled with garbage, scratched wooden floors that beg to be waxed, pipes crisscrossing the dirty ceiling in a maze-like pattern, and one bare lightbulb that flickers on and off like it can't decide what it wants to do. The only touches that make it not look like it's a drug den is a plank of wood I use for a ballet bar, a dirty rug with pink flowers on it that my neighbor gave me when I was 13, an old nightstand I propped the camera and my laptop on, and a small pile of empty water bottles and protein bar wrappers. The only feature of this room that I'm proud of is the huge mirror collage that covers the wall opposite the window. I found old, broken mirrors that people had thrown away at the dump and spent hours hot glueing them together so that the broken pieces melded together to form one big creation. It took me weeks to find enough mirror shards to fit together and use, but with enough hard work I finally did it. It isn't much, but I call this dingy place my dance studio.

I found this place when I was 10 and used it as my secret hideout. I was running away from a gang of neighborhood boys who thought it was funny that I wanted to play with them and decided to chase me when I stumbled upon a group of abandoned warehouses and found a secret room in one of them. It's not the giant, mysterious place I thought it was when I was 10, but it still serves it's purpose. There's not a dance studio in my small town, so I set up shop here and honed my talent over the years in this tiny room. It smells like mold and dirty shoes, the floors get dusty minutes after I mop them, and the window refuses to shine clear even after hours of scrubbing it with Windex, but it's the only place I can practice dancing without disturbing anyone. To me, it's home, and a much better alternative than practicing in my cramped apartment bedroom. Mrs. Kim, the lady downstairs, still refuses to look at me even though I apologized a billion times for accidentally falling through the floor while practicing a plié and leaving a gaping hole in her ceiling. I got a few jobs to earn enough money to buy the materials to fix it myself, but even after I spent my whole free day off fixing it for her and doing odd jobs around her apartment, she still doesn't like me.

When I had sufficiently caught my breath enough to move without feeling like I was dying, I knee walk over to the camera and hook it up to my laptop. Silently, I start the tenth video of the day. I watch as I bow and introduce myself before the music fades in and I start my routine. My knees aren't bent when they aren't supposed to be, I hit all the moves I choreographed for myself, and most importantly, my hair looks great. It's a winning audition piece, and I should know. I spent all day one Sunday watching audition clips of people that passed the test and got into Seoul Academy when I should have been doing my chores.

Only when the video stops do I start to jump up and down like an idiot, singing "We Are The Champions" as loud as I can. 

"FINALLY! CHOI MINA IS FINALLY DONE WITH THIS STUPID ROUTINE! I AM ALL POWERFUL AND WILL PERHAPS ONEDAY BE ON STAGE WITH THE GREAT MASTER KWON BOA!" I flail and flop around before