21| Achaean Republic
Lara Amanda: “Está Lloviendo”
Tune: TARABAROVA - МЕНІ КАЗКОВО
Music & Lyrics:Yamira Calderón, Marcos “Marquitos” Correa
Lara Amanda: “Está Lloviendo”
Tune: TARABAROVA - МЕНІ КАЗКОВО
Music & Lyrics:Yamira Calderón, Marcos “Marquitos” Correa
Lara Amanda Ríos never wanted to be a singer. She enjoyed music like any other young girl, but singing was never her priority in life. She had her typical schoolgirl crushes on those nineties boybands she grew up with—NSync, Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men. She lived for the Cómplices al Rescate when they came to Achaea in a sold-out youth concert. She also had every Harry Potter book in Spanish and English (her uncle lived in America and would send her a new Harry Potter book as soon as it came out of the press), and had all the Rebelde CDs and backpacks, and knickknacks and knew all their moves. That was her passion: movement. She wanted to be a front-line dancer for the world’s most famous pop artists of the time. Britney Spears. Christina Aguilera. Madonna. Oh, how she wanted to vogue in the eyes of the world or, at least, in front of a TV screen! What a time to be alive!
Lara Amanda was born in the city of La Izquierda, a sleepy and irresolute fishing hamlet not so far from Corola City. Her father, Mariano Ríos Correa, used to be a production manager at one of the last paper factories in the region until it closed in 2008. Her mother, Alicia Vergara, was the daughter of one-time mayor Eliseo Vergara, whose only claim to fame was showing up drunk to his own inauguration and his election, where he voted against the wishes of his own party. Because of her circumstances, she grew up in a well-off household unlike the arguably poor fishing and manufacturing families. By suburban corolano standards, she lived a comfortable life—maybe not one with the luxuries afforded to other children her age a half-hour away in the big city, but enough for her to be happy and enjoy life with her younger brother and her grandparents nearby.
When she was a child, Doña Alicia took Lara Amanda to Corola City for some mother-daughter bonding. She had a fun time visiting fancy restaurants and visiting local museums, until she passed by a large window where a young woman dressed in a leotard teaching other students to stay en pointe while listening to the faint sounds of Swan Lake. She was enthralled with the gracefulness of the young ballet dancers practicing their plier while lifting their arms following the releve. She loved the pink tutus and pointy shoes the dancers were wearing. She even liked how a cute trigueño boy was following the dance moves near the mirror as the ballerina taught the class. For a few minutes, Lara Amanda’s body would sway to the rhythm of the music, mentally practicing the triumphant moves in her brain and basking herself in the glory of the cultured audiences of the world.
Within thirty minutes, Doña Alicia signed Lara Amanda up to take ballet classes at the local branch of the University of Corola Department of Fine Arts Youth Program. It cost a pretty corcino, but she got her pink tutu, ballet shoes, a hairnet, a leotard and a passion to go all the way to Corola City two times a week to develop her ballet skills. In a few classes, she was one of the best and brightest dancers they’ve ever seen in the in her program. She could bend her feet 90 degrees, do plier and twirl like no other. Her flexibility was astounding, and her moves were—pardon the pun—en pointe. In fact, she even received a Youth Arts Scholarship from the University of Corola Fine Arts High School so she could develop her passion for dance.
During her time in the Fine Arts High School, she performed many classical ballet pieces, ranging from the subtle to the complex. Gorsky’s Don Quixote. Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Giselle. Harlequinade. Many considered Lara Amanda a ballet prodigy, one that, with modern practice and harnessing her natural talents alongside her high grades, could take the ballet world by storm. But it was her youthful tenacity and passion for ballet that brought young Lara Amanda at loggerheads over her future, more so when—so say the rumors—legendary Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso, founder of the world-class Ballet de Cuba, stealthily watched one of her performances while she was in town. Upon admiring the gracefulness Lara Amanda showed on stage, she quietly demanded to speak to her director and beckoned to learn about the young woman. Little did Lara Amanda know that she would have a hard choice to make in her very young life: either study the art of ballet in the prestigious Havana Ballet, or stay in Corola and keep working her way towards a degree of Fine Arts.
Instead, she snuck into a local discoteca in the Corola slums to dance night away and twerk her way to some good reggaeton and hip-hop. The rapid and aggressive, nonetheless sexual, movements virulently clashed with the graceful and classical ballet style. She wasn’t alienated to the hypnotic and vulgar rhythm, no. But she wanted to combine both dance styles, to which the stuffy and somewhat conservative university ballet corps. With her unique, flowing movements and newfound city grit, Lara Amanda became one of the Corola urban scene’s foremost video vixens, showing off her ballet moves while dancing en pointe and mixing go-go with down-home perreo.
She never thought of herself as a singer, but she never knew her entertainment career would go the way of Paula Abdul: Her dance friends entered Lara Amanda into WorldVision: La Final after sheepishly recording a two-minute clip of her covering a Britney Spears song while warming up for a dance recital. In a few weeks, she was invited by the Achaean WorldVision delegation to compete in a revamped national selection with nine other performers. After two rounds and many votes from the Achaean public and select Multiversal nations, she won the right to represent Achaea in Besen and show her first single, Está Lloviendo (“It’s Raining”) to the world watching there—and maybe, if she’s lucky, net herself a very first career win.
The throng of cheering fans waving flags and showing their lights appear in the first camera shots before the Achaean entry begins. Talking about them, there aren’t as many loud, restive and rambunctious Achaeans as you would expect in a normal WorldVision crowd—whereas the country slowly lifted pandemic restrictions and reopened select spaces for tourism purposes, many compatriots chose to stay home. Even if significantly more affordable than before, flights to Besen were sparse and out of reach for the typical Achaean budget. Rather, many would watch the contest through Zoom parties and very judicious get-togethers where allowed, so as not to run afoul of the competing demands of federal, state and local jurisdictions. This means that, for the first time in a while, the few Achaeans that made the trip to Besen and took advantage of the 1,000 fan tickets sponsored through a fan club lottery were not able to congregate in one specific corner and cheer on for their entry—rather, they were scattered around the cavernous arena. But wherever there was a camera, the Achaeans were there: waving their fueguero flags, shouting at the screen, playing their panderos and hitting their well-seasoned pilones with full vigor, always having a great time, even at a distance.
After the classic red-blue-green lights spur through the camera, the LED screens show a very peculiar interface some members of the audience were painfully familiar with. A familiar ping rang out as the first house beats were playing. The interface shown on screen was split in three: the first part had a small, black rectangle with a chiseled torso, a green circle, and a five-pointed star. The second part was gray and had interlocking text bars with alternating blue and orange text boxes. The bottom part, perhaps the greater two-thirds, had an Apple-looking keyboard in the interface interlocking with an emoji screen. For many anxious people in the audience listening to these sounds, they were somewhat subconsciously checking their phones, their faces sheepish and shadily looking at the sides to see who or what sent those nonexistent messages through their phones. The few Achaeans in the crowd were cracking up, all the while hiding their apprehension themselves.
On the stage, four male dancers were aimlessly wandering around the stage with their expensive smartphones, dressed in peculiar urban fashions. Some were just walking. Others were stretching their arms and legs in a rhythmic fashion. Lara Amanda, meanwhile, was walking en pointe from the back to the front of the stage. She was wearing a orange-and-yellow jumpsuit inspired by Fenty and modified by Corola fashion designer Alexey Lafayette, who embroidered a gilded “21” in the center of the heel, the position for her performance. She also wore black ballet bondage heels that were pointed towards the bottom and had interlocking silver laces, making her look sexy and empowered. En pointe work is very tough and discriminating for any ballerina, let alone wearing seven-inch heels while carrying the weight of the body on your feet! Because this movement is so demanding—and the performance essentially requires her to be en point for more than three minutes of strenuous physical exercise—, the Achaean delegation hired a podiatrist and a physical therapist who were waiting in the back to come to Lara’s rescue should the need arise.
This performance was meant to be sensual, sexual, chaotic, and irreverent. Very Achaean indeed.
For the first stanza, Lara Amanda slowly but tactfully bent her body and made herself look like a crab—she was, after all, a Cancer, and she needed to live her season. She began to waack while singing, looking intently at the camera while contorting her body into a crab-like fashion. Even with the bending of her body, she looked tall mighty and imposing. The dancers beside her threw away their phones and also began waacking with her, their rhythmic and somewhat violent moves contrasting with the classier and daintier (some in the business will say soft and cunt) from the former ballerina/video vixen. Their legs and feet were kept steady in the round, their arm movements growing expressive and conflicting yet always coinciding with the rocking house beat. Some even took the time to wink at the audience, probably seducing them and playing with them along.
Eres anfitrión o viajeroAre you hosting or traveling?
Te haré felíz (¿Me escuchas?)I’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
Cómo sé que eres de verdadHow do I know that you’re real
Te haré felíz (¿Me escuchas?)I’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
Qué propuesta me dicesWhat proposal are you making
Lo que hago (¿Cúando? ¿Cómo?)What I’m doing (When? How?)
The LED floor below them swiftly transformed from a busy road into a dance floor with pulsating colors in a rhythmic fashion. The eagle’s eye camera had Lara and the dancers waack in an x-cross pattern (they were socially distanced, for it was required by the Achaean delegation). When Lara Amanda rapped “Está lloviendo,” however, the camera switched to a wide pan of the stage and she and all the dancers immediately pulled out small grey pocket umbrellas. (Why grey, did you ask? It was the cheapest umbrella the delegation could find in a pinch.) The LED behind them also showed raindrops falling intensely on the ground, confirming the speaker’s dual negation and excuse of committing due to weather. As if weather ever stopped any encounters from happening. The stage lights as well change into a blue-white-grey hue, giving the ambience of a rainy day that invites laziness and not an encounter. It was inviting and comfortable, a dissonance to the dancers’ harshness on the floor.
Sí, yo sé que te encuentras soloYes, I know that you’re alone
No puedo hoyI can’t today
Está lloviendoIt’s been raining
LloviendoIt’s raining
Está lloviendoIt’s raining
In the left camera, Lara Amanda swiftly slid from the center and the men lined up with their umbrellas. The men on the sides had their umbrellas above their heads, and the two men on the middle had the umbrellas beside their waists. Back to the front camera, she was walking as if she were an army general inspecting the troops. This gave the performance a much more comical and irreverent vibe, a subversion of gender roles and a deconstruction of sexuality. The flag-waving crowd was cheering her on, looking imposing and fantastical with her boots and owning her fantasy.
Ya-achú, achúYes-achoo, achoo!
¿Cómo tú estás? BienHow you’re doing? Fine
EspérameWait for me
Te busco un pañoI’ll look for a towel
Achú, achúAchoo, achoo!
¿Cómo estás?How you’re doing?
Sí, yo sé que te encuentras soloI’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
No puedo hoyI can’t today
Once Lara Amanda finishes walking, she swiftly grabs one of the men’s umbrella and does a split, spreading her two legs in the air while she sings “Está lloviendo” and the men humorously react with fake-surprised and fake-undignified facial postures. In a split second, two men quickly pick her up the floor and begin spinning her around while another two men dance on the sides, treating their light umbrellas as fans to which they could dip and dance and point at Lara Amanda whenever she was ready to pick up and perform again.
Not only the spinning added flavor to the performance, it also served to rest Lara’s tired yet calloused feet as the podiatrist recommended. It wasn’t that she never practiced with ballet heels before—after all, she was already doing pointe work since she was 12 years old—rather, the strenuous dance moves would take a dangerous toll on her feet if she were not careful. There were small strains and stress points throughout her body from years of practice and overuse and all-around carelessness.
Está lloviendoI’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
LloviendoIt’s raining
Está lloviendoIt’s raining
The wide pan returns to the camera where the dancers briefly accommodated Lara Amanda to the top stage, standing proud and erect. She then began catwalking towards the camera in a stunning 3-D fashion, looking intently at the audience both at the arena and at home. She moved her arms in a single triangle formation (left hand over right shoulder) and alternated with her hips, left-right-left. All the while, she was hitting every beat and looking intently at the camera, as if she were challenging the audience to say something. As she grew closer to the camera, the four dancers beside her were catwalking as well, this time with their umbrellas hidden in their back pockets and the phones pulled back from God knows where they found them the last time. (They actually had two dummy spares.)
Eres anfitrión o viajeroAre you hosting or traveling?
Te haré felíz (¿Me escuchas?)I’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
Cómo sé que eres de verdadHow do I know that you’re real
Te haré felíz (¿Me escuchas?)I’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
Qué propuesta me dicesWhat proposal are you making
Lo que hago (¿Cúando? ¿Cómo?)What I’m doing (When? How?)
Once again, Lara Amanda placed herself in a Cancer formation and the rest of the dancers followed her lead. This time, the dancers below her decided to make cartwheels crisscrossing each other and barely touching each other across the stage. While they awaited their turn, the other dancers swayed their hips from side to side in a feminine fashion and scrolled their (prop) phones with one hand. It was hard to embody the tried-and-true, soft-and-cunt femininity in their moves, especially when they had tight shoes and even tighter clothes.
Sí, yo sé que te encuentras soloYes, I know that you’re alone
No puedo hoyI can’t today
Está lloviendoIt’s been raining
LloviendoIt’s raining
Está lloviendoIt’s raining
The music’s tone changed. Two of the dancers carried Lara Amanda’s feet and elevated her as if they were performing a cheer routine. One dancer suddenly pulled up a cardboard hammer and sickle decorated with the rainbow flag from his back pocket and bent his knees to the camera, his arms raised and facing the screen. Behind her, another man was marching beside them, the camera looking at his chiseled arms. Lara Amanda pulled a copy of a vintage Chairman Mao hat with a green camo look and a plastic red star glued to its center front. (This would ruffle some anti-Communist feathers both in Achaea and abroad for such spectacular display of neo-blasphemous Maoist communism, but as stated before, this performance was meant to be a true slap in the face to Achaea’s conservative prejudices—after all, it was supposed to be irreverent. Lara Amanda never understood nor cared about communism well enough to become a Bolshevik. But she knew rainbows and colors made it trendy. And French more so. As she poke the words in French, her voice sounded emphatic, triumphant and completely exaggerated—not unlike the tone of a North Korean news reporter.
Oui! Les frères et les sœurs de la bourgeoisie, maintenant il est necessaire que nous tirions nous-mêmes du rêve de l'indifférence. Je ne consens pas à cette confrontation, et personne ne me force ni ne fait pression sur moi pour que je m'amuse bien!
Yes! Brothers and sisters of the bourgeoisie: It’s time to wake up from the dream of indifference. I don’t consent to this encounter, and nobody forces nor pressures me to do something fun!
Lara Amanda then swerved to the lower end of the stage, carefully tiptoeing in her ballet shoes while making her swerve look effortless. Those shoes hurt so much, she thought to herself! Who was the idiot that convinced her to risk injury to her feet while wearing such high heels!? Not that she didn’t look sexy on them, mind you. Not that she didn’t at least overstretch a muscle once or twice wearing the regular plier shoes as she tiptoed her tall, skinny, and imposing frame over her bulging toes. They ached the longer she wore them and the more sher thoughts were consumed by them, in a three-minute performance—and she performed six hours straight in a charity ballet fundraising marathon when she was a teenager, what have you. And yet, she winced through the pain, taking the over-the-top sultriness of her movements in stride, making the actions around her look sensible and effortless.
The dancers behind her kept their movements. Unlike other moments where they would carry and spin her around, this time involved smaller tip-toe-like movements to the left-right-left of the stage. The LED floor around them swifted into a pulsating dance-floor pattern, and the beaming lights surrounding transformed the stage into a vivacious disco ball. It was a vivacious, queer moment laden with the dubious negation of a sexual encounter.
No me quiero mojar (lloviendo)I don’t want to get wet (it’s raining)
Me puedo enfermar (lloviendo)I could get very sick (It’s raining)
Ahora es muy tarde ya (lloviendo)It’s too late to leave now (It’s raining)
Sí, yo sé que te encuentras soloI’ll make you happy (Can you hear me?)
No puedo hoyI can’t today
Está lloviendoIt's raining
¡Lloviendo!It’s raining
¡Está lloviendo!It’s raining
¡Lloviendo!It’s raining
¡Está lloviendo!It’s raining
Lara Amanda and the all the dancers performed a dip and slip—or in layman’s terms, a death drop—at the final beat. The Milano crowed cheered for the Achaeans, even though the song was all but over. For those finely tuned with the Achaean memetic imagery, the next final seconds were a treat.
The camera slowly moved towards the front ledge, where a young cameraman with a big microphone, a boom microphone stand on the side, aimlessly whitling to the beat of the music. He also had a peculiar T-shirt with the same interface as shown before in the LED screens, only this time with few messages in light blue and orange boxes. There was something uniquely perplexing about his presence—as his face was somewhat familiar to many before. Suddenly, the camera went above his head and a thud was faintly heard to viewers at home, as if he fell.
If you paid attention, you would know this was Jose the Floor Manager, the television producer-cum-adult movie star that became a quarantine sensation in both Achaea and the ABEN, and subject to a very controversial and karmically memetic deportation from Britonisea after national quarantines in both countries led to the “influencer”’s paperwork having arrived late in Britonisea. That said, his cameo was very unexpected and somewhat planned at the very last minute by the Achaean delegation. Not even the audience at home expected that the very dead meme would be revived in such a crude way—no less consider how the Multiverse would perceive it! Nevertheless, the Achaeans laughed and were very busy making memes to annoy their friends and family on WhatsApp.
The performance ended, and the camera portrayed a sea of flags, with the camera highlighting the one or two Achaean banners in the audience. With the help of her performers, Lara Amanda stood up and wave at the crowd. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”, she said as the performers beside her also waved their hands. Before she left the stage, however, she accidentally tripped on her very exhausting ballet heels—but lo and behold, like a true ballerina, she managed to plier her way out of the stage with grace.
