Sunday, November 23, 2003

I've been to three different dance classes on three consecutive days now, today being my third day.

On Friday, I attended a Club Dance class, the first in a series of four classes. This course promised to teach us the proper techniques of club dancing. When pressed to explain, all the receptionist could tell me was "all the dances that you see done in clubs." Brilliant, I thought. Should be interesting enough. At the very most, it'll just all be hip hop.

I was wrong. Instead we were taught that there apparently is a right way to dancing to electronic music. My teacher called it disco music, but as he's over forty years old, I'll attempt to translate it into modern lingo. I'm fairly certain he meant Eurodance and disco house. At the very least, those are the kind of songs he played.

I came out of that dance class a little traumatised, a little upset at learning that I'd been techno-dancing the wrong way for the last two years. Then, I decided, heck it. So he's taught me the right way to move my knees - so as not to injure them - but he sure as heck doesn't have the hands down. And even if he considers my hand movements to be wrong dance-wise, I don't care. It's raver culture, man.

Yesterday, I went to a Lindy Hop workshop, teaching us spinning technique, which is good, because I tend to have trouble with my spins, either completing them quickly, or more recently, not getting dizzy at the end of the spin. That class was relatively less intense than Friday's class, and the music played was completely different... in fact, the music they played was completely different from all of the swing music I usually dance to.

And today, it was my weekly MTV Dance class at my gym. We'd been doing Janet Jackson's All For You for three weeks now, and I can tell you that it is without a doubt one of the most complicated MTV dances I've learnt. It's exactly like what she does in the music video. And if you've heard the song, you'd know for sure that the song has a very quick tempo. Today's class was the conclusion, and we learnt some rather difficult moves today. So, at the end of the class, when it was time for us to put everything together, and I found myself able to do it all (though with mistakes here and there of course), I felt exhilarated. It's been a long time since I'd gotten that feeling from any of the dance classes I've attended, and it felt really good to be getting my groove back.

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