The Story of Steps

A Performance

Faye:

Finally we're back to performing. After weeks of rehearsing, it's amazing to go on stage and perform, to make our fans happy and escape the real world for a few hours. 

With pure excitement we're backstage withour styling crew - who now is showing outfits to us. Yes we've seen them before but that was weeks ago and shortly before rehearsals. To see them again now makes me feel so happy that I'm unable to hide the wide grin on my face.

It's an amazing work from the styling crew, really. They always dress us into such nice costumes! By now we're used to their skills, but it still amazes me how talented they are with creating outfits like these. 

"They look great." Claire says, looking at the outfits with full interest. "Thank you. Just what we need."

As usual, she's really nervous about the concerts. Whenever we put dancing into our shows, and well that's what we basically do besides singing, she's far too excited - mostly hiding this excitement behind talking a lot; with her conversations being about the most random things possible. L

isa and me are more calm, at least for now. Today we're going to perform in Manchester but we're also going to perform in Leeds - basically we're heading all across England, finishing in London. I admit, maybe I'm really excited too. It's just different to perform in front of a small audience, like we've done before for charity for example, or if we perform in an arena like we do for our usual concerts. But both is just great.

"Are you ready to be styled?" a member of the crew asks us. We just nod in approval, sitting on on our respective chairs as we watch them doing our hairstyle and our mascara. I watch as they style my hair into curls, making me look at me fascinated. When being styled by the crew, it's always fascinating to see their work. Like... they're just so talented!

"Your curls remind me of when we were filming in Cannes." Claire says after a while of silence, watching as the crew is styling us. As her hair is relatively short, it's a lot easier to style - at least compared to Lisa and myself. Our hair is definitely more difficult when it comes to creating a proper hairstyle.

"Or when we were in Florida." Lisa adds after a while. "Remember it? It was shortly after you decided not to wear your hair in dreadlocks anymore."

"Although she decided back to dreadlocks later on, shortly after we filmed the music video for 'Stomp'." Claire laughs. She was always quite teasing about my hairstyles back then but oh well, that's fine. The magazines also teased me about that, although always in a friendly way. And admittedly, I indeed used to style my hair in differing styles a lot, like in curls just like now before mostly wanting to change my hairstyle again and deciding to wear it in either braids or dreadlocks - or just straightened. 

Thinking about it... it probably is time for a new hairstyle again. Maybe extensions again?

"Mine reminds me of- of that concert we're the band splitted." Lisa tells us quietly, frowning at herself in the mirror. The crew styled her hair into a braid, adding some curls too. It indeed reminds of that certain concert but I was too shy to admit that.

Claire bits her lip, seeming to be nervous again - probably because she doesn't want us to argue.  Especially not about when we disbanded. "Remember when we wore those coloured parts in our hair when we filmed 'Stomp' and people said how much that suits us?" she changes the subject, talking a lot as usual when being excited. "That video was so great and even the dancing was nice! I know that you know that I don't like to dance at all - but well, I mean, what I was going to tell you is, that I really enjoyed the styling and the video back then. You understand?"

"No." Lisa answers confused. "But I wasn't intending that you're going to resign again or something, really not. Excuse me for making it seem like that."