It is afternoon, and the Sonics Dance Team, which usually sexualizes the hardwood during Seattle basketball games, is sexualizing the paving stones of Westlake Plaza. They are promoting themselves with a "public practice," doing their fly-girl routines to bumping bass lines for a crowd of gawkers.
Walking and watching, I'm reminded of an idea I heard at a party a few months ago: the city's modern dancers should take over the Sonics Dance Team. Because modern dancers should be able to dance for their day jobs; because they would make the choreography more interesting; because if there must be gawkers in the world, they should gawk at something of artistic merit; because duh. (Distracted by the memory of the conversation, by my own gawking, I walk into a young woman. "I'm sorry," I say. "It's okay," she lies. Irritated, she gestures toward the Dance Team, then around the plaza to the gawkers. "I see what women do to men.")
The Sonics Dance Team wears low-slung white pants, visible black underwear, makeup, strained smiles, and white T-shirts with a slit down the front to advertise their cleavage. "Smile! Energy!" the coach (in white pants and high heels) calls out to the dancers as they slide and bounce and gyrate on the paving stones. "You're the best! They know you're the best! You know you're the best!"
Four youngsters, maybe 13 or 16, wearing baggy, frayed clothes, begin dancing nearby in a playfully mocking, synchronized routine. They have disconcertingly bright hair (green, purple, and an orange-blue hybrid) and one wears an even more disconcerting dust mask, as if he is expecting an airborne attack. Coach cuts the music. "Down here," she says, demonstrating a step for her team, lunging forward, putting her hand on her thigh, "it's like a push." The four fade back into the crowd. Coach turns on the music. The team resumes dancing and the foursome reemerges, all wearing dust masks, one wearing a dirty orange blanket over her thin shoulders. Their eyes are self-conscious and defiant. They want to stake a claim, to do something, but seem unsure of everything. They take their hands in and out of their pockets while they walk. They start dancing. Then they stop, move, and start dancing a little closer to the team. Coach cuts the music. The four fade again to an innocuous corner of the plaza.
Later, a blue-haired boy tells me, "We're the—"
"No, don't tell!" an orange-haired girl squeals, trying to clap her hand over his mouth. "We're the WCSC," he continues. "The Westlake Center Skittles Crew. See?" He gestures around. "See the hair?" He doesn't want to tell me his name, but says the WCSC comes here every day. And what do they do? "We don't do anything. We just are." Do they do dances, like the Sonics Dance Team? "Sometimes. We do the Time Warp." Do they do the Time Warp out here, on the plaza?
"We do the Time Warp wherever."
