Hi everyone! Welcome back to this story, I am so happy you guys seem to be liking it so far.
This story is inspired by the BBC (a British television network) series 'Strictly Come Dancing', and its American equivalent 'Dancing With The Stars', neither of which do I own.
As ever, I do not own Austin and Ally or anything you recognise from the show in any way, shape or form, nor do I own any recognisable brands, songs or lyrics within them.
Enjoy!
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Chapter Four: Week One – First Rehearsal
I woke up bright and early the next morning, eager to start my rehearsals with Austin. Unfortunately, this excitement has made me wake up at 6:30am, earlier than I normally do and I find myself with a lot of time to kill. So, I decide to go for a run – I usually only go running on days when I don't have a rehearsal, but I figure I might as well this morning, especially given how sunny it is out.
I have a quick breakfast, a fruit salad of apples, pineapples, oranges and grapes before heading back through to my bedroom. As I pass Trish's room I hear her still happily snoring away, and smile to myself thinking about my crazy best friend trying to dance with her partner, some golfer nobody's heard about for like 20 years.
I put on a pink tank top, black leggings and my running trainers and put my hair up into a ponytail, grab my phone and headphones and head out the door. As I go down the elevator in my apartment block I plug my headphones in and turn on my running playlist, and as I leave the front door of the building I take off into a light jog down the streets of Miami.
My route takes me down to the beach, not too far from my apartment, and I start to run along the path that winds its way alongside the beach. As I'm running, one of Austin's songs comes on my playlist and I instantly smile at his recognisable voice, singing along in my head as I continue to run. Believe it or not his music is actually really good music to run too – a good, fast beat, a catchy hook and an upbeat vibe.
I start going over my plans for the choreography in my head, and get lost in it, suddenly snapping out of it and realising I'd ran a lot further than I'd planned to, having gotten distracted by my thoughts about the dance and not really taking notice of anything else. I check the time on my phone – 7:30… wow, I've been running for nearly an hour!
I decide I'd better turn back to make sure I'm not late to rehearsal, that is definitely not the impression I want to set to Austin on the first day.
I make it back to my apartment in record time and quickly hop in the shower, cleansing myself of the sweat that had built up on my run despite the fact that I was probably just about to get all sweaty again at rehearsals.
I put on a pale blue vest top and black leggings with my sunglasses. I grab my dance bag and several bottles of water, along with my purse, before leaving the apartment… no prizes for guessing that Trish was still asleep.
It only takes about 10 minutes for me to walk to Palm Beach Dance Studios, where I'm going to be rehearsing with Austin, and I get there at 9:55. I wait outside the main doors for just a couple of minutes, until I see him round the corner and smile as he walks up to me.
"Hi Ally." He greets happily.
"Morning Austin." I return equally happily as I turn to walk through the glass door into the studio reception. I sign us in and lead him down the corridor to our rehearsal studio. "How are you today?"
"I'm good, I can't wait to actually start!" He replies enthusiastically.
"Neither can I." I reply honestly with a smile as we walk through the door into the studio. "I have so many ideas for this dance." I tell him as I walk across the room and put my stuff down in the corner by the stereo system, and turn to see him following me over to put his stuff in the same place.
"Awesome, I was looking up some other Quicksteps people have done on the show last night." He says, sitting down on the floor next to me.
"Oh yeah? What did you think?" I ask him as I get a bottle of water out of my bag and take a sip.
"It looks like a pretty fun dance. But I think I can do better than everyone I saw." He answers confidently, taking out his own water bottle.
"Well, I guess we'll see about that." I respond. "Let's start by doing a warm up and some basic stretches."
I lead him through a simple warm-up routine – a few lengths of the studio doing high knees and kick-ups, before we move onto some frog jumps and gates to open up the groin, and finally some windmills and side stretches to loosen the arms.
Next we sit on the floor to stretch out a little. This will give me a chance to get a sense of his flexibility so I have an idea of what he'll be able to do in future dances. We start with some simple hamstring stretches and I'm fairly surprised how far he can reach down his legs.
I hear a small chuckle as I reach down all the way and wrap my hands around my feet with my head on my knees, and look up to see Austin shaking his head a little with an amused smile on his face.
"What?" I ask, smiling.
"I just don't understand how people can physically be that flexible." He answers.
"Lots of practice, my friend, lots and lots of practice." I respond, before returning to my previous position to make sure I'm properly stretched out.
When I'm happy that we're both suitably warmed and stretched, we walk back over to the corner to grab a drink.
"Okay, so as you know we're doing a Quickstep this week, and the song we're going to be dancing to is Mr Blue Sky by ELO." I tell him, and his smile widens.
"I love that song!" He replies excitedly.
"Good," I reply with a small laugh. "Chances are you're going to be hearing a lot of it this week so you might get fed up of it by the end." He just shrugs. "So no one gets sent home this week because it's the first week, but we still need to make this routine amazing, lots of people will make up their minds on who their favourite of the season is just by the first dance so we need to get it right." I tell him.
"Got it." He replies with a small salute, which I find strangely cute.
"Okay, so my idea for the start of the dance is that it's like you live in the apartment above me and you're always dancing, causing a racket." I explain as I stand up and walk to the centre of the room, facing the mirrors. "So what's gonna happen is we're gonna be stood behind these giant squares either side of the dance floor and the camera's gonna make it look like you're above me, that make sense?" I ask.
"Yeah I think so." Austin replies.
I walk and grab some tape from my bag and place two diagonal lines on either side of the dance floor towards the back of the room. "So we're gonna use this as our like place to stand behind for now." I say, indicating the area opposite me for Austin to go and stand behind the tape, which he dutifully does. "Okay, so we're gonna be like silhouettes so you can just freestyle dance, do whatever you want, make it clear you're making a lot of noise. Then I'm gonna have a prop broomstick and bang the top of the box to make it look like I'm banging on the ceiling, and when I do that you need to respond by stamping a few times, yeah?"
"Sweet." Austin replies, clearly mentally thinking of something to do for his mini freestyle section.
"Then the music will start, we'll come out from behind the squares and I'll be marching over to you like I'm about to come pounding on your door and you're gonna 'step out' of the door into me. Let's just try that."
Needless to say, this is pretty much effortless, so now we're stood directly in front of each other. "And now, we start the actual dancing." I reply with a smile, which he returns. "So the first thing I need to teach you is hold. You'll hear this term a lot, but basically being in hold is whenever we're like this…" I say before demonstrating by placing his right hand around my upper body and taking his other hand in mine, placing my spare hand on his shoulder. "Whenever we're in hold, this position needs to be really firm, okay?"
He nods in response.
"Next thing: frame. It's so important you have your back straight and your chin up, otherwise it looks crappy, look in the mirror." I say and we both turn, seeing his naturally slightly-slumped posture. Seeing this, he straightens up and we look much better. "Perfect!" I say. "We'll go into more detail about this stuff later but for now let's just start the choreography."
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Several hours later, we've got through the choreography for about half of the dance, and I'm super happy with how it's coming along. Austin's picked up the steps really quickly and he's just as talented as I thought he'd be.
The Quickstep is a very tricky technical dance so he has really been thrown in at the deep end for the first week, but he's handled it exceptionally well. Not perfectly, and of course there will still be a lot for us to work on, but for a first day it's been like a dream.
"Good job!" I congratulate him as we finish another run through of what we have so far, and wrap my arms around his neck in a hug.
"Thanks Ally." He replies.
"I think we can call it a day there, we've got through everything I wanted us to today." I tell him as I step out of the hug and walk over to my dance bag, taking a large gulp of my water.
"Thank God, I am exhausted!" He replies, walking over to join me as we sit on the floor together.
"This is just the beginning, rock star, it's not gonna get easier from here." I reply with a sigh as I slump against the wall slightly.
"I'm enjoying it, though." He continues, turning to face me with a smile.
I giggle. "Good, cos if you were already hating it after just one day then I've definitely done something wrong." I joke, and he laughs a little too.
"Well that is definitely not the case." He responds and we both just smile at each other for a second. "Same time tomorrow?" He asks as we simultaneously start putting all our stuff away.
"Yeah, 9am here, if that's okay?" I ask.
"Yeah of course, I'll be here." He reponds with a smile as we both leave the studio and walk down the corridor to the reception. I sign us out and we walk out the door into the warm Miami afternoon. It's only 3pm so it's still sunny and hot as hell, so I put my sunglasses back on. The studios are right on the sea front, so we cross the street and sit on a bench facing out over the beach. "So, Ally, any plans tonight?" He asks.
"Not really, I'll probably just have a movie night with Trish." I reply, half wondering whether my Latina best friend has actually made it out of bed yet. "What about you?"
"I have a meeting with my manager, Dez, later." Austin replies, making me realise that he actually is still a huge pop star and he probably still has a really hectic schedule. How he's managing to find time for the show amazes me. "I mean I say manager, he's actually my best friend but he's just the person I trust most to be my manager." He explains, and I nod and smile in understanding.
"How are you finding time to do this show and still be a world famous pop star?" I ask, curiously.
"I've decided I want to step away from music, just for a little bit." He responds, and I'm shocked.
"What?" I question.
"Yeah, I just wasn't really feeling the music I was singing on my last album. I mean I love it, it's catchy and fun, but sometimes I feel like it's just not me, you know?" He asks.
"Yeah, I understand." I reply, smiling. "At least you'll have more time to practise your dancing." I joke, nudging him in the ribs slightly.
He chuckles. "Nah, I don't wanna dance unless I'm with you." He replies… it feels like a joke and I know that's how it's intended but it still gives me a kinda warm feeling in my stomach. "Besides, kinda difficult to dance a Quickstep in hold when you live on your own."
"Fair point." I nod. I'm used to practicing and choreographing on my own in my apartment, but I understand that it's more difficult when you're new to the style of dancing and are still somewhat reliant on your partner to guide you. "Anyway, I don't want to hold you up from all your pop star business so I'm gonna head back to my apartment now. I'll see you tomorrow morning, Austin." I say, standing up as he does the same and hugging him quickly.
"Bye Ally. Have a good evening." He replies with a smile before we both head off our separate ways.
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When I walk through the front door of my apartment, I see Trish sat on the couch watching some old Spanish movie, which I of course can't understand a word of. "Hey Trish." I say as I walk behind her to go dump my stuff in my room and get changed.
"Hola chica." She replies, making me giggle at the fact she's still in Spanish mode.
I change into blue skinny jeans and a black crop top before walking back out into the living room and sitting on the couch adjacent to the one Trish is lounging on and pulling out my cell phone.
"How was rehearsal with Austin?" She asks, not taking her eyes off the screen.
"Really good." I reply as I open my Instagram. "He's as good as we thought he'd be."
"We?" She asks.
"Okay, I thought he'd be." I correct. "I thought you agreed with me, though?"
"Girl, you were in an Austin Moon trance when we were talking about him, you were barely registering what was happening." She replies and I blush slightly, scrolling down my feed more furiously. "But you have a point, the man clearly has talent."
"That he certainly does." I reply. "He picked everything up really quickly. Did you have a rehearsal with Tony today?" I ask, referring to her partner.
"No we had our pre-roll filming so I told him we'd start proper rehearsals tomorrow."
"How did that go?" I ask.
"He's hopeless." Trish replies with a sigh. "He basically just stood there and I twirled around him." She continues.
"Oh well, at least you should be able to get a laugh out of rehearsals with him." I reply, getting up to grab some food from the kitchen. "Are you cooking tonight?" I call from the kitchen.
"Honey, when have I ever cooked for us?" Comes her reply, and I laugh.
"Touché." I call back. "What do ya fancy?"
"Food is food, Ally." She responds and I smile and shrug before I start preparing a meal for us.
As I predicted earlier, we spend the evening eating and watching movies together, laughing our heads off at the ridiculous old rom-coms and crying like little children in emotional scenes. I love nights like this with Trish… to be honest I love nights like this with anyone.
All in all I feel like it's the perfect end to the perfect first day of rehearsals.
Bring on Saturday night!
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There ya go! Chapter 4! Written in about an hour, not the best chapter ever but I'm still happy with it.
In the next chapter I have to describe the entire dance… that's gonna be fun.
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Catch you later! :)
