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Corbin Bleu performs at the 2008 Rock County 4-H Fair.
Corbin Bleu performs at the 2008 Rock County 4-H Fair.
JANESVILLE — A sure way to make a heart throb is to get close to a heartthrob.
Just ask Kristen Aubrey and Brianna Prokopec.
They were two of many Janesville girls who got up close and personal with teen heartthrob Corbin Bleu on Saturday night at the Rock County 4-H Fair.
Prokopec’s close encounter with one of the stars of Disney’s “High School Musical” was the more public. Make that the most public.
Before the show, female fans gave Bleu’s crew their cell phone numbers, and Prokopec’s number was the one the hunky star called from the stage. Bleu called the wide-eyed 16-year-old Parker High student up on stage to make her his love interest for the song “Close.”
“It was amazing,” Prokopec said. “I felt like a celebrity.”
They sat in facing chairs, and Bleu looked into her eyes as he held her hands.
They slow danced. They hugged. Prokopec got goose bumps.
“I was shaking,” she said.
Aubrey, 14, and gal pals Emilie O’Donnell and Sarah Gray were among the first to get to the grandstand Saturday morning to get spots close to the stage. They pressed up against the fence for the concert, but it was Aubrey who got the closest.
A “meet-and-greet” pass came her way through a relative, and Aubrey found herself among 30 or so young folks who met Bleu backstage before the show to get autographs and have photos taken with the star.
“He’s really nice, and I like his smile,” Aubrey gushed. “And he put his arm around me. I was gonna cry. I almost cried. I had like one tear.
“He’s really hot.”
Bleu, four dancers and four musicians delivered a hot show, maybe a little too hot during “Never Met a Girl Like You.” As he and his two female dancers moved suggestively on stage, one 13-year-old girl wrinkled her nose: “Eew, they’re dirty dancing.”
A whole lot of people were dancing behind the crush of kids that stood in front of the stage. Moms boogied with kids, many as young as 6 or 7. Daughters perched on the swaying shoulders of dads.
Neither the grandstand nor the grass area was completely filled, but the crowd close to the stage was dense and deep.
The shrill screams of girls—any nod, gesture or acknowledgement from Bleu drew a chorus of shrieks—counterpointed the thumping, booming bass of Bleu’s blend of hip-hop and R&B.
But it wasn’t just girls close to the stage.
Corbin Bleu fan Dylan Crank, 8, a Janesville Jefferson Elementary School student, brought some buddies as backup: Kyle Carhart, 11, and Hunter Ellefson, 10.
So, boys, are you going to scream?
“We’re guys,” Carhart said. “We don’t scream.”
After the show, Bleu was still setting local hearts aflutter as he toured the carnival midway and rode the rides, apparently as part of a video shoot.
