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"When people screamed for Mi•Mi, they never really screamed for me." Daena blurted out in a low tone, the stillness of her voice echoing through the huge mirrored room lit up by rows of lights on the ceiling. Just minutes ago, the room was full of dozens of people, from her legally-former group members Misu, Miki and Mae, along with their choreographer and her personal manager Romeo Lefèvre, Mi•Mi's manager Anniken Dahl-Smith, 12 dancers, and a team of assistants who stood to the side, holding props, heels and costumes as they waited for their cue. Everyone was working hard on perfecting all the fine details for the first and only world tour Mi•Mi will ever have, Bend It Like Beckham. The group had already performed 24 dates but were marking the next week as their first night at New York's very own Madison Square Garden and there was no better time to work out the kinks than now. We all watched as everyone squirmed across the room to the music, just as ants do in their busy but severely organized colonies. 5 whole hours passed before I got Daena to myself, the last hour consisting of everyone turning it into a social event and eventually left. The same girl who was sweating her heart out, dancing, singing, falling over and laughing about it, now sat before me with a lifeless look in her eyes, slouched over and seeming more discouraged than ever.
"This tour has been a win-lose for me. People support me now more than ever, always telling me 'FWIGHTING!!!" and 'keep your head up!' because I'm being forced out of the group. You'd think I'd just sit back and appreciate it with all my heart but it only makes me realize a lot of it is only because they know I'm going to be gone after the first leg. Before, I would look out onto the crowd and see every name on a poster but mine. I'd look at the.. not our fans... but their fans, I would look out at their fans and would have to search the crowd before I could find anyone who was looking back." Daena looked up at me. "Have you ever looked out onto a crowd of twenty-thousand just to realize none of them were looking back? It never bothered me much before, I always thought that was how it just was, one of the stage's great wonders I guess, but now that I'm experiencing what it feels like to be actually supported, the reality of it all has kind of came crashing down on me." When she stopped talking, I knew she was done talking about it for the day, maybe even for life. While speaking the words that sat at the very bottom of her heart, she changed her volume from low to lower, her eyes shifting and her speech taking long breaks in between every sentence. It was like just saying how she felt somehow betrayed the only thing she had ever known, Mi•Mi. Though the courts all agreed that she was no longer apart of the group and her exile would be official on May 6th of 2016, she had made a lifelong pact to herself and her sisters and that promise made her quickly swallow all memories of her ill experience. We sat there, looking around the room in complete silence, seeing how many reflections we could make in a mirrored room. At least I was. Looking back, I'm convinced that every time she stared herself down in one mirror, she was trying to picture her life without the other 3 girls of Mi•Mi standing in front of it.
It may be sad but true that without doubt, there will come a day when the memory of being overshadowed will be the only memory she has of her time in Mi•Mi.
  
Suddenly, there was the sound of rustling plastic at the door. It stopped for a minute once the sound got close but only to be replaced by the sound of smacking, which was then followed by the doors to the dance studio bursting open. "WOOOOOH CHILD DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THIS KIMCHI!!" Romeo Lefévre says in heartfelt adoration of the Korean barbeque he's gotten on his hands on during his stay in Korea. "And they gave me like 20 more toppings for this fried rice. Isn't that nice? McDonald's refuses to hand out their sauces like they some kind of secret, Chic-fil-a refuses to serve gays as if anyone goes there for anything but the Polynesian and milk shakes, and the $5 Footlong ain't even a foot long! We could learn something from here." He blabbed on as he pulled containers out of his bag and spread them onto the table. The room filled with the smell of Korean hospitality and it lifted every mood in the room. Some might even say the lights began to shine brighter too. Romeo said his prayers and by that I mean he continued to praise and worship the food that sat in front of him.
Though his eating habits may not have easily gave it away, Romeo is one of the greatest contemporary dancers of all time, the first few decades of his life being dedicated to winning competitions around the world while he was still a young man, breaking boundaries for his age group. He found his footing in choreographing ballet around his mid 20s, coaching some of the best dancers of this century like the legendary Tamara Rojo, Alina Cojocaru, Natalie Osipova and even Ulyana Copatkina. After his innovation in the ballet classics, not to mention his legendary production in Cats, he settled for work in the music industry around the late 90s, where good choreography was becoming more and more revered by the video. "I'm a man of many talents," Romeo said as he fixed Daena's plate for her, making sure she stuck to her diet. "I go where the money is, I go where there's not only experience needed, but fresh new ideas in art." We could spend all day talking about how he's the face behind all of your favorite videos but what matters most is how he ended up as Daena's manager. "Through my many years of work, I've seen artist blow up and fade away. I work well with most of them but take a liking to very few. Don't call me a psychic but in the span of the 20 years that I've been around, the few that have stood out to me have all lasted long beyond their peers. I have great instincts." He looked up from his food and at Daena, a small smile growing on his face. "When you mold a dancer, you mold a star, I've specialized in that my whole life. Now I have about 5 artists that I'm planning on managing for a very long time. Of them all, Daena's the worst dancer." Daena looks up at Romeo with her face half stuffed, half embarrassed. "But she has the greatest potential of being a star. It's always the most clueless who end up withholding the most power." She blushed at his words and looked back down at her plate of kimchi.
We continued our meal as a group of drunken friends, telling lewd stories and laughing harder than ever as we passed the food around on the hard, shiny floor until there was nothing left. Once we were finished with our meal, Romeo choreographed Daena.. into cleaning up after us. He clapped to the tempo of her march. "Yaaaas hunty, strut your way to that trash can, this is what you were made for!" Daena rolled her eyes and swung her hair, throwing the trash away but only in protest. Romeo leaned over and whispered into my ear. "Look at that sass, that's a true diva right there. I have no idea why she can't bring that out in her 2-steps!" He laughed and then began to jog across the room, back flipping until he found the center of the studio. Daena sucked her teeth and walked slowly followed. "Show off!" She yelled. Within the next hour, the room began to fill back up again, but with a different crowd. On the verge of being kicked out off one group and kick-starting her own career, she was a busy woman who often found herself double-booked, but only for the time being. "I was never the best singer, dancer or the prettiest in the group. It came so naturally to the other girls and it made me feel so low. I often let myself fall behind. But no more, I won't let myself get to that point of self-esteem ever again. I want this, I truly want this now. When you've spent your whole life giving up on yourself, you have to work twice as hard to turn that despair into results." Daena said as she began to do some basic stretching up with Romeo. She looked at herself in the mirror and provided the pep talk she had needed throughout her whole career. "I am capable, I m worth it and I am a diva, it's time I've started acting like one." Romeo proudly watched as she made her own declaration of independence. He suddenly stood up from his stretching and slammed his foot down. "Now it's time you've started being one," he snapped, pulling her and 4 dancers into windows as they began to warm up.
  
There surely weren't as many people as just a few hours ago, but by the time close to everyone had arrived, there were enough. There were the dancers, a few assistants, a friend or 2 who were in charge of the music and a physical therapist watching closely from the front, making sure Daena was okay. In case you forgot, the determining factor that got her kicked off of SM Entertainment's roster was a back injury that messed up their financial plans. Though she had healed fast, her physical therapists still monitored all of her activity. He couldn't make it earlier but he eyed her every move to make sure none of her joints fell apart while he was absent.
Being the center of attention at this affair breathed a new life into Daena. She danced harder, sung louder and flipped her hair with a fiercer snap. This was clearly where she belonged, front and center, you could tell even while she was recovering a back injury. Every song was better than the last and the emotion took over each time, her vocals never failing to excel. No matter how fast or slow the tempo, you could hear the soul seeping out of her neck, the sounds of R&B spilling out onto the dance studio and soaking deep into the walls. You just had to be there to experience it. She reminded me something of the queen of souls that came long before her time. Her recklessly good voice reminded me of a younger Aretha Franklin and while she worked each mirror in the dance studio, I only saw the attitude of Patti LaBelle staring right back. "I never could work at my full potential in a group where we were expected to include K-Pop, Pop, R&B, Hip Hop and every other genre on the planet. We made nothing but crossover music and it was very seldom that any of us could sing full out. We all had very different techniques and at times it could be overbearing. The way I learned to sing is just extremely intimidating. I grew up idolizing Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle and other great women of R&B soul who have wrongly been forgotten. They had the kind of voices that shut down stages and shut up full venues. It was a voice that was made especially for a great bass and drumset. A lot of things have changed since then, no one really makes music like that anymore." Daena reflected on how hard it has been for her finding and making music that represented her in her voice's best interest. "It's kind of like I have the voice of an earlier generation, trying to find music of today that fits me alone is really difficult. But with a little push and a lot of room for innovation, we have at least the outline of what I'm really starting to think will be a great album."
Towards the end of the practice, Anniken Dahl-Smith sneaks back into the studio, being a busy woman herself who was probably quadruple-booked every day of her life. Mi•Mi had been one of the very first acts she managed back in a time where the only people on her roster was hip-hop duo Rum & Coke and Malaysian singer Yasmine Kiambang. Now, Daena was still under her care but just no longer as her personal project. The upcoming launch of her official management company, Dahlhouse Entertainment LLC., would mark an era where she would no longer be in charge of handling Daena's career but overseeing it and making sure she did everything in her power to make sure Daena's had enough room in this industry to spread her wings and fly to the top of the world. You could tell the usually loud-mouthed and bossy woman was out of place as Romeo stepped up and took over, sitting her right back down any time she had a suggestion. It was clear that everyone in this family of stars was going through a change, taking responsibility and starting a new line of work. Though it was hard for her, Anniken sat quietly in the corner of the studio and watched as the seed she planted bloom into the flower she always knew it would become. Romeo had put Mrs. Smith in his own sort of timeout after she heavily criticized his choreography. Because of the man who was now in charge in one of her very firsts artists, she couldn't say much, but the smirk on her face as Daena performed in the mirrors for the hundredth time gave all of her words away.
Time was winding down and it was clear that everyone in the room was tired, hot and sick and tired of being hot. Everyone was ready to go home except Daena. She had one last song to get through before she could call this practice a success. The last 2 hours have been full of progress but it wasn't until this very moment that we realized the whole rehearsal had been building up to this very moment. One of her friends in charge of the music turned on the very last instrumental of the day and everyone stood at attention as Daena stood in the middle of the studio without the presence of background dancers. She got in character immediately and started the song off with a powerful presence, her voice filling up the empty space surrounding her. Her choreography for this particular song was a lot more subtle and slowed down but you could feel the energy from her voice alone. We all watched in awe as she finally perfected every move in a song she stumbled every 3 seconds on just hours ago. Suddenly Daena's fight up to this point in her life began to make a lot more sense to me. Talent often gets pushed to the side in a business that prefers a headline over a voice that deserves a place in history. Someone who was as beautiful and talented as Daena never deserves to think any less of themselves. When I heard her sing the final words of the song, I finally realized she had to go through what she did because it prepared her for the future ahead of her. Overcoming was just in her DNA.
"What you don't know about Daena, is that she's far from giving up/It's clear what you dunno 'bout Daena, will hurt you!" She ended the line in the kind of belt that simultaneously sent a chill down the back of everyone in the room. We were standing in the presence of a star. A true star. Romeo leaned over to me and once again whispered in my ear. "She's coming for blood." He said, never taking an eye off of Daena. Anniken who stood on the other side of him nodded at the statement.
But I didn't need the confirmation. It's only a matter of time before Daena is as big as her voice. Anyone who has seen the perseverance in action can say it without doubt.
  
Edited by user 18 April 2016 18:21:45(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified |
