If the music doesn't send chills down your spine, certainly the dancing will.
To see Port Moody secondary's Ben Freemantle interpret the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah in his YouTube video, one has to sit down to witness grace in motion.
The 17-year-old student of the Caulfield School of Dance choreographed the routine himself - and it won him a spot in the youth division for this year's PNE Star Showdown.
Freemantle will be performing the number on Saturday, the opening day of The Fair.
"I perform it a lot," he said. "I feel like it's my signature piece.... I'm relaxed with it. It's my own movements. The quality comes out and I can chose what to do with it, physically and emotionally."
Freemantle also picked the two-minute dance for the decades-old PNE competition because it's modern, he said. "I know that ballet would not go over well in a show like this because it's such a diverse audience," he said.
PNE entertainment director Patrick Robert said Freemantle will be offering a crowd pleaser.
Of the 400 submissions the judges whittled down for the semi-finals, which also includes kids' and adults' entries, "Ben's video was, hands down, head and shoulders above any other dancer's for his category," Roberge said. "He's that good."
Freemantle is the only Tri-City competitor in the PNE showdown as well as the only dancer in his division; and should he advance to the finals on Aug. 21, Freemantle is eligible to win the top prize of $5,000 cash, not to mention the title that's been earned in the past by such luminaries as Michael Bublé and Carly Rae Jepsen.
Still, as strong as his routine is, Freemantle said he doesn't see contemporary dancing in his future.
Last September, he was accepted to the San Francisco Ballet School and he will continue with his studies at a higher level, come next month, on a full tuition scholarship; in his spare time, he will finish his Grade 12 online.
Though he returned from San Francisco after five months last semester, Freemantle said the "downtime" back at home has allowed him to focus strictly on ballet instead of combining it with jazz, modern, tap and hip hop, for example. "I think I improved a lot because it was just one thing," he said. "I can feel it."
His recent practice also caught the attention of a school director, while at a four-week summer intensive in San Francisco in July. "The director came up to me and said, 'Where have you been training? You're so much better.' That was really great to hear."
"The difference between Ben as a performer last spring to this spring in competition, community performances and our year-end show was enormous," added his longtime Port Moody teacher Cori Caulfield, principal of the Caulfield School of Dance. "His growth as an artist paralleled his growth as a technician in the previous September to June this year.
"This speed of improvement makes me so excited for his future," she said.
As for his next steps, Freemantle, too, has his mind set on his career.
His immediate goal is to "train, improve my technique and be the best that I can be," he said.
And, by the time he's 19, "I want to be in a company. My dream is San Francisco but it's a hard company to get into.
"But I think I'm on the right track."
