Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 21

The room alarm clock beeps three times before the heel of my palm collides with its top.

And after rising from my outrageously comfortable bed, I don't look at the time again.

Dawn still hasn't arrived when I go downstairs to the studio Lucas got me permission to use in the morning, nearly three hours before any ballet classes begin.

Though it won't be for years, I guess you say Elara's speech inspired me.

On gloriously aching legs, I find my way to a smaller barre left out and begin a routine that should be repetitive and boring. I enjoy it far too much, especially as that ache of yesterday courses through every part of my body.

Elara wasted no time after her speech, having us spread out across the floor for another grueling technique class.

In a few weeks, they'll bring in the choreographers and teaching apprentices for the Corps as we near the start of the fall season and they return from their scouting trips in the states and Europe. Maven told me that's when the real fun starts, because of how it's always so quiet the first few weeks without the buzz of production and rehearsal, the constant rushing over to the Met for performances.

Nonetheless, this place seemed loud enough to me. Between Blonos and Elara's classes . . . I haven't been in a place with so much life in a long time.

Then came tap, which was equally exhausting. It was only an hour and a half of combinations, taught by a very quiet woman—though it was apparent from the start that she knew what she was doing—but my feet hurt in a way they hadn't in a while.

I tried to focus on myself as I had during ballet, but every so often my eyes peeled away from my own steps to Cal or Maven's. The latter proved to be one of the best in the class, far more at ease than his brother. While Maven excels in tap shoes, Cal's . . . uncharacteristically mediocre. I wouldn't go so far as to call him bad, but he didn't stand out the way he did in ballet.

As soon as class began, Maven took a place at the front line without asking. Cal went to the second line, a few places to his brother's left.

And I saw Iris, the only girl I remotely know at the Academy, and politely settled in the spot next to her back another row.

Weird, how the Academy stresses its dancers practice more than one genre. But again, it's hardly the first time I've noticed what a weird, strange—however successful—institution it is. From the little I know about professional ballet companies, dancers practice ballet for eight, ten hours a day, year-round. They don't bother with tap or jazz or anything else, yet the Academy does, claiming it's good for their dancers.

But Sara—Sara Skonos, tap extraordinaire who likes to be called by her first name—told us newbies that tap makes us stronger, whether or not it's our "major." Strengthens the legs, loosens up those crunched, painful ankles, makes for a good sense of timing, she explained curtly. If you know how to tap, you should continue with it as long as you can. Though from what I've heard, tap's a dying art. I don't know how the Academy's profiting from it.

Perhaps that's the Academy's secret, aside from Elara's talk of theatrics and gusto. Dancing jazz and tap works parts of our bodies that we otherwise wouldn't, and it offers a change of focus for a few hours a day. My schedule won't stay like this for long anyway: when early September rolls around in five weeks, I'll be back to ballet and nothing else.

The jazz and hip hop class was another story. The people I danced with were good, great, and clearly knew a thing or two about their craft. Including Cal. Any memory I had of his tap dancing was quickly washed away.