Five, Six, Seven, Eight

The dance studio above the dry cleaner’s has mirrors on three walls, a radiator that hisses on the hour, and a sign on the door in glittery marker that says “KIDS’ CLASS UNTIL 6. ADULTS: PLEASE WAIT WITH DIGNITY.” You are waiting, with as much dignity as you can manage, for the adult beginner class you signed up for on a dare.

At six on the dot, the door bursts open and twelve eight-year-olds stampede past you in a cloud of glitter and juice-box energy. Behind them, the teacher sags against the doorframe, hand over her heart.

“I just taught twelve eight-year-olds a whole routine and I need to scream into a pillow,” she says to nobody in particular. Then she notices you. “Oh! Talk to me! Are you my six-thirty?”

She’s Yuna. She has a high ponytail, an oversized jacket covered in patches, and the kind of posture that comes from years of training you can’t quite imagine. The other adult students are late, she tells you, cheerfully. Very late. Possibly not coming. “It’s raining,” she says. “Adults melt.” She bounces on her toes while she says it, as if the eight-year-olds have left behind a charge she still needs to burn off.

So it’s just you. She puts on a song with a bouncing beat and teaches you the first eight counts. You get them wrong. She teaches them again, slower, counting under her breath. You get them a little less wrong. When you finally hit the turn at the right moment, she shrieks and claps so loudly that someone in the dry cleaner’s below bangs on the ceiling.

During a water break, you ask how she started teaching. She sits on the floor and stretches, and for a moment the bright energy softens. She tells you she trained for six years to debut in a pop group. Twelve-hour days, diets, rankings every month. Then, a week before the final cut, she walked away. “Everyone thought I was crazy,” she says. “Maybe I was. But I wanted to dance because I loved it, not because someone was grading my smile.”

You tell her you think that was brave. She looks at you in the mirror for a long second. “Thanks,” she says quietly. “People don’t usually say brave.” She tells you she still sings in the car on the way home every night, windows down, at a volume she describes as “a public safety concern.” Teaching, she says, is the first thing she’s ever done where nobody ranks her, and the kids don’t care whether her high note is perfect, only whether she’s having fun.

Then she jumps up, restarts the song, and makes you do the whole routine three more times, until you are laughing and breathless and she is singing along at full volume, completely off-key, unashamed.

When the hour ends, the other students still haven’t shown. Yuna leans on the barre, flushed and grinning.

“Okay, confession,” she says. “There’s a showcase in four weeks. My kids are doing a number, and I need one adult on stage to do the big lift with me at the end. Nobody else in this class can count to eight.” She tilts her head. “You can. Barely. Want to be my partner?”