Dancing in the Rain

Chapter 1

Sophie's POV

There were twenty girls in the class. Sure there are boys but this class was only for girls. It was very focused on technique. From an outsider the class must look amazing. Since we are only five minutes in we are all at the barre in normal ballet shoes. Madame is a very strict teacher so we are all in the same thing.

We are all in navy blue leotards. They are practice ones that Madame expected us to wear for every practice. Since I'm here six out of seven days of a week so I have eight of them. My feet are in standard ballet shoes laced my ankles that have moulded to my feet after constantly wearing them. My long chestnut hair is pulled into a bun with bobby pins hold the stray bits in.

"Leg higher up Elisa," Madame yelled.

"Nice work Sophie," she called and I smiled.

Once we were all warm we swapped to pointe shoes. We are currently practicing for a massive production of Cinderella. In these practices we follow on the technique of the female dancers making for the technique and the spacing. I am Cinderella so I have a main part. My ex-best friend Theresa also wanted the part but I got it and she takes every opportunity to try and make me look bad but Madame knows all about it.

After an hour and a half of practice we are finished. My dance for the day isn't over yet. I have another two hours of practice. I am working with the prince also known as Michael. He also goes to my school like most of the dancers. We have been practicing his duet for ages but it is really challenging. There are other dancers in the background but it has a lot of challenging lifts.

"I can't believe we start our two weeks for performances on Saturday," he laughed as we started to change and pulled shoes on.

"It's only four days away. I'm going to be here for hours for those last few days," I said before standing up.

My shoes were securely tied. I had a white tutu on so that we could practice with the wide skirts. The ballet teachers decided that we knew the dance well enough that we didn't need someone supervising; they were probably stressed about other dancers anyway.

We ran though it five times. Michael managed to get all of the lifts right and I felt like a danced well. We joined in with the rest of the main cast to practice. Madame was finally happy with the result so I left the hall around seven. I was so tired and hungry by then.

"Remember that we have full costume and cast rehearsals tomorrow, fixing up mistakes as well and the same on Friday before the first performance at two on Saturday afternoon," Madame ordered as we left.

"One, two, three, four. Theresa move to the left, five, six, seven, eight. Theresa move over. You are meant to be behind Sophie not next to her," Madame screeched.

Theresa ducked her head but did move backwards. It was our last rehearsal before our first performance. We had spent all day after school here on Thursday and Friday rehearsing in costumes. Madame was very stressed but I'm not very nervous. We have run through this quite a few times and I am happy with it so far.

Michael and I stood in the wings. In the opening scenes he is a bunch of random characters as well as the prince. I was wearing a brown dress that came down to my knees with thick straps. I checked that my pointe shoes where tied properly before I stepped onto the stage.

The curtain was still closed and I started on the stairs. For the whole performance we had stairs with a plain background. Our studio is amazing so we get money from certain companies which are why we can afford costumes and props and sets when we are all at high school. Most of the main dancers like myself, Michael and Theresa have just started our senior year. We always do our major performance right after summer break because we have lots of time to practice then.