Murder on The Dance Floor
Created | Updated May 19, 2004
Anything and Everything
Friday afternoon.
'You've got mail' says my computer.
I click, and a little shiver of excitement tickles down my spine as I read the subject heading 'Cast lists'
I eagerly open the castings for Anything Goes, and Everybody Dance, two of the biggest numbers in the show.
My name's not there.
I read up and down the list again, more slowly.
Nope, still not there.
I print a copy and pore over it closely. Amazingly enough, my name refuses to appear on the page.
I'm stunned. I look at the other names on the list to ascertain their dancing ability. Yes, they're names that I would have grouped with myself.
Now I'm starting to get paranoid - why am I not on the list? Does somebody really not like me? Or has my dancing ability gone to hell in a handcart?
I phone my boyfriend for a bit of a sob.
I email my closest dancing friend who says, reassuringly, 'I thought you must've asked not to be in those numbers!'
I tell myself to stop being so big-headed. That the choreographer has used his best professional judgement to pick the right people for those routines. That it's a poxy amateur show in one of Europe's cultural backwaters, not bloomin' Broadway! That it's a blessing in disguise as I'd have found the rehearsal schedule very tough.
And do you know what?
That doesn't cheer me up one iota.
Meanwhile, backstage...
I had another stab at stage-managing, as the dance section of the last show I SM-ed was being reprised along with a whole pile of dances from around the world (including some rather gymnastic can-can girls)!
The length of my 'to-kill' list grows, as a certain group of dancers come on stage too soon. This gives one of the littl'uns only 30 seconds to change out of her hard shoes and into her complicated lace-up soft pumps. She turns out to be a real trouper, and dashes on stage, right on cue. Only then do I spot that one lace is precariously undone, posing grave danger to herself and the dancers around her. I hiss at her from the wings to come off stage. She gives me a barely perceptible sideways glance, before surreptitiously slipping off the shoe and chucking it at me, in doing so revealing a lovely big hole in the toe of her tights.
D'you know, I don't think the audience spotted a thing!
Disco diva
Had fun boogie-ing to the Eurovision Song Contest1 on Saturday night, complete with my newest dressing-up box addition - a pink beehive wig! I tried convincing people that I'd come as Pearl Carr, but they were either too young or too uneducated in the scripts of Monty Python to get the joke. I did get shouted at a lot for blocking the telly, though...
Murder on the Dance Floor
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