#cr hal

Mr. Rime is actually the first Pokemon I thought of. They're "graceful" and "highly skilled at tap-dancing," but most importantly "it is popular due to its amusing movements and has been known to influence the Mime Jr. of the Galar region to learn its dancing steps, leading them to evolve into Galarian Mr Mime." This means Hal's Me. Rime, Shim Sham, is more than just a popular opening act, or diversion between acts of a play. She can also teach others to tap dance! I figure that it has to be just as easy for her to teach humanoid folk as it is other Pokemon. She can tap out the beat with her cane, and she doesn't need to be able to speak to do things like demonstrate steps or correct posture or whatnot. She definitely taught Shadia how to tap.

Meloetta seems like an easy call--it can sing, it can dance, it can influence emotions!--but I waffled back and forth on including it. Hal's decently well off, he's well respected, but he's also just a guy. Why would he have a mythical Pokemon? Then I remembered that in the games prepubescent trainers are out there catching ever mythical and legendary under the sun, and they probably don't care about song and dance any more than your average Joe. If some eleven year old can catch a Meloetta and have it stick with them, then a middle-aged gentleman with a passion for the arts, lots of friends who can deliver him rumors of sightings, and a literal hero brother, can CERTAINLY manage it too, right? Anyways, although Meloetta can control feelings of both humans and Pokemon, I think it only does so to like calm people down if a fight breaks out in the theater or something. When it comes to the emotions of people listening to it sing or watching it dance, I'm pretty sure that Hal has made it clear that it shouldn't do more than give emotions a gentle nudge. Which, let's face it, is bound to happen anyways with any great performance.

Illumise leads swarms of Volbeats to form signs and complex designs in the sky. You know that means that she is going to be absolutely fantastic at managing the lights during performances and doing straight up artistic light shows in the sky to catch people's attention and anyone to folks far and wide that a show will be starting soon.

Chatot can not only mimic human speech, but as it gets older it even learns what the words mean. Chatterbox has been at Hal's side since he was just a kid, so by this point it knows a lot of what it's saying. Chatot can also mimic Pokemon cries and other sounds, and then turn those sounds into melodies. This is a super useful and diverse Pokemon for someone in Hal's field. If they have down time together, you'll often catch Chatterbox telling Hal knock knock jokes, something it's been doing for decades now. It knows a few dozen, and still manages to surprise him with a brand new one every so often.

Primarina is another one I waffled on. Every time I talked myself out of Meloetta, I talked myself back into Primarina. Once I decided Meloetta was a yes, I wondered if I really needed another singing and dancing Pokemon. Then I thought about how gorgeous its performances would be at night, under the delicate light of the moon. And then read the line "this theatrical pokémon considers every battle a stage" and went, yeah, Hal absolutely needs this fancy grown-up-theater-kid Pokemon in his life.