Backstage Romance: An Austen-Inspired Romantic Comedy Box Set by Gigi Blume (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📕

amusing study that I found myself watching him when I should have been dancing. He could easily put on a one-man show without even scripting it, and I’d probably pay to see it.

Stella introduced Colin Hunsford in the morning with a short announcement and quickly left the rehearsal studio. The man sashayed before us for a long, silent minute as if to survey what he had to work with. He didn’t seem pleased with what he saw until his eyes fell on Jane, and then only gave a little nod of approval. He spent the next three quarters of an hour showboating his accolades and why he was more qualified than our previous choreographer, or anyone else in his acquaintance for that matter, with the exception of his mentor whom he was sure to name-drop throughout the day whenever an opportunity arose. I’d never heard of her. A sneaky Google search on my phone while he ranted on came up with pages of information on Catherine de Bourgh, apparently a world-renowned dancer in her time and founder of the Rosings Institute of Dance. The most current photo I could find was of a majestic, slender woman in her sixties or seventies. Her silver hair was tied into a fierce, yet elegant bun, and she was celebrating the debut of one of her star students.

After some of the oddest warm-ups in the history of dance, Colin taught the choreography for Climbing Over Rocky Mountain. He pranced to the center of the room and flicked his hands in the direction he wanted us to go.

“All right!” he chirped with a clap. “We will start with a sashay from stage left, go into three pirouettes on pointe, and then I want you to break off into the lines which I will now place you in.”

“On pointe?” cried Caroline. “We’re dancing on pointe?”

Colin swooshed his long, flowy scarf and snapped his head over his shoulder sharply in her direction. It was quite fabulous in a Nathan Lane in Birdcage sort of way. “Dahhhling,” he oozed, “of course you’ll be on pointe. This song is a classic ballet showpiece. Haven’t you listened to the D’oyle Carte soundtrack? The flutes, the staccato trills. It begs for sissonne and temps levé sauté. In 1978 the great Fordyce Ballet Company performed a musical rendition of The Tempest entirely on pointe.”

He then waffled on for ten minutes about the Fordyce Ballet Company and how every dancer should study the principles of their training philosophy.

At length Holly spoke up. “But we didn’t audition on pointe.”

Colin’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows arched into his hairline. “What? That’s preposterous. No wonder the old choreographer was replaced.”

“He had a family emergency,” offered Lydia.

“And what is your name, love?” Colin asked with interest.

“Lettuce.”

Colin ran his eyes up and down over her body and strutted around her, making a complete circle. I found it a little amusing that Lydia calling herself Lettuce didn’t faze him one bit. Maybe he didn’t hear what she said? He stopped in front of her, resting one hand on his hip and the other on his chin.

“Hmmm,” he resounded. “You have a lovely long neck. Graceful arms.”

“Uh… Thank you?” she squeaked.

“I’m making you dance captain.”

Her mouth fell open. “But I’m not a ballerina.”

“You will be once I’m done with you,” he said as he strutted back to the front of the room. “I want everyone to bring pointe shoes tomorrow. Today we will make do with demi-pointe.”

More than a few groans and shared expressions of confusion followed. I was sure the only one trained on pointe was Jane, and she wasn’t even in this scene. I certainly didn’t own pointe shoes, and I was willing to bet Lydia didn’t either. I was already calculating how many sprained ankles there would be by the end of the week.

Colin shooed everyone back in place and pointed to Lydia to front the line. He assumed fifth position and demonstrated his most elegant port de bras. He counted and sashayed. Everything he said was in rhythm. “Ready? And, one two three four five six seven eight. Everybody, follow Lettuce.” (Apparently, he did hear her call herself Lettuce after all.) There were a few snickers from some of the girls. He sped through, ignoring them. “Sashay, sashay, and turn, turn, turn, relevé, don’t forget your port de bras. Again.”

And again and again and again. Poor Lydia was on the spot, and Colin lavished her in equal measures of fury and praise. Any time we couldn’t get a port de bras or jete perfectly, he’d scream, he’d cry, he’d use his scarf as a whip and smack us with it until we got it right. However, when we were on it, he’d fall to his knees and kiss the floor.

“If you had been wearing pointe shoes,” he said to Lydia, “I’d kiss your feet. As it is, I will defer my raptures until tomorrow and content myself with kissing the ground you walk on.”

This well-meant but slightly creepy compliment found Lydia, who loved attention from any human of the male variety, embarrassed. She shifted her wide eyes around the room and shrunk back into the folds of the other girls like a shy schoolgirl.

I overheard her tell Holly later that day that she wouldn’t be purchasing pointe shoes just to spite Colin and his overzealous foot fetish.

It was mid-day when we finally broke for lunch. Most everyone went to the juice bar down the street, but I had packed leftover mac-n-cheese that I shoveled in my face in forty-five seconds flat. With time left to spare, I wandered the scope of the theatre, inhaling its essence, letting the ghosts of shows past seep into my skin. A theatre was a magical place, and there was nowhere else I felt more at home than within the dome of its shelter. I loved the smell, the texture, the sounds of the building itself even when it was resting from the bustle of performers.

The stragglers that stayed behind for