December - Zouk: Feel the Loathe

It’s December, I’ve come to the end of my crash-danceathon and tonight’s swan-song lesson is in Brazilian Zouk. Nope, I haven’t heard of it either, but I like a surprise - if it is a nice one. Unfortunately for me on this occasion it isn’t.

I get to the dance studio with ten minutes to spare and have a quick game of hunt the classroom. I stumble upon it next door to the caretaker’s office that I have already accidentally entered to find an old bearded man changing his work trousers.

WHOOPS

I find the correct / clothed people’s room. It isn’t much larger than my bedroom, but as I am one of only three Zouk learners tonight this should prove to be too much of a problem.

A man in a random clothes combination approaches. He wears the kind of mismatch outfit that I would only throw together under Lemsip sedation and wear to the doctor’s surgery.

He introduces himself as our tutor and then asks if I am a professional dancer. (No really he does). I pity the man’s poor eyesight and stunned by the question I resist the urge to fabricate some spoof dance credentials and give an honest answer. Sometimes I surprise myself.

The question is posed to the two other dancers in the room. They manage to look bashful and smug at the same time. Yes - we establish that they are both professionals. Oh goody. This is going to be fun / embarrassing / undignified /humiliating* (*delete where appropriate).

As ever we begin by learning the basic steps, counting along the way. It’s remarkably like a Lambada – another dance I hated. I instantly hate this too. And once we have mastered the counting we are instructed to prowl and look sexy by launching our whole body into each step. There’s nothing worse than being asked to look sexy whilst doing basic arithmetic in a pair of socks. And when I do dare to look at the other dancers in the mirror, they appear to be in a full flow rendition of some sort of narcissistic dance orgy.

I get my coat.

But leave my dignity somewhere behind.

November - the dread shoes

Way back in January when I embarked upon this project, I vowed that of all the dance styles available I would most definitely NOT be taking a ballet class. However being a lady in possession of huge amounts of pigheadedness and yet not an ounce of shame, I find myself leg-warmered-up and ready for a beginners’ class.

It’s a full class today so I make myself known to the tutor as the first-timer. This move is possibly unnecessary. Clearly I’m the only person in the room over five feet tall who is not made out of rubber.

The ladies and a token lad stretch around me. There are limbs everywhere; at every imaginable and unimaginable angle. There is also a lot of knitwear. I am guessing that these are home-knits as I have never seen leg warmers that reach the thighs, not to mention the knitted leotard with matching knitted leggings being sported behind me. I am hoping that this is machine-washable.

Our tutor is a tall and sturdy French gentleman with a face from the Beano and a beer belly from his local. I doubt his ability to do anything but hang out with the Bash Street Kids or down a pint of Kronenbourg. Yet when he moves, he too is as bendy as rubber, as light as a feather and as graceful as - well a ballet dancer.

We begin by learning repetitive positions and moves at the bar.

It’s plies.

It’s demi-plies.

It’s leg lifts.

It’s other manoeuvres that I don’t possibly know the French terminology for.

It’s hard work.

And after a full hour of basically squatting the safety of the bars are removed and we take to the open floor.

This is where I appear to have suffered memory loss. Either that or I am slightly embarrassed about my first attempt of doing a pirouette in public. I will leave it to your imagination.

The class draws to a spinney end and bizarrely I leave feeling none of the intimidation and fear that I thought I would get from a ballet class.

My dancing is clearly still falling flat.

My shamelessness is thankfully coming along in leaps and bounds.

October - lame & bad

We have reached the back end of October already and I’m a recovering cold-aholic. Yet despite thundering sinuses I am determined to crashdance before the month is through.

I decide upon the Lambada. I’m not exactly sure why. In fact I have absolutely no idea what the Lambada is. (Retrospectively I’m still not sure I could enlighten you either). The dance school brochure informs me that it is in fact not a model of car, but a passionate and graceful Brazilian party dance. Nope I’m still none the wiser.

I arrive punctually and take my place in the stairwell. There’s a Samba going on in the next classroom. It looks hectic and my sinuses pulse in time to the Latino beats.

We wait.

We wait some more.

We wait some more still.

I am told that this is the “Brazilian way”.

(It’s the British way to be punctual… I’m just saying).

To break the monotony of waiting, up bounds Kitty - a blond, athletic, tall and eager first-time Lambada dancer. She is giddy with excitement in a half dancer, half Labrador kind of way.

Kitty is a trained dancer but similarly doesn’t have a clue what the Lambada is. And despite already establishing myself as a first-timer too, I suddenly become the Lambada expert. She excitably fires off questions. These quickly bore me, so I less excitably make up answers.

We eventually are allowed into the classroom. There’s not many of us present (some presumably have perished with the wait & the incessant questions in the stairwell). To compensate and pad out the numbers we have been given two tutors who launch us immediately into a warm up comprising of the basic Lambada steps.

It’s tragic to say but I am instantly lost in the warm up alone. The problem stems from the fact that I can’t even see the tutor’s feet beneath her unfeasibly long trousers. So in my imagination the basic Lambada steps consist of a moon walk. Upon request she hikes up her trouser legs like a Brighton beach paddler. This doesn’t give off the graceful air of “Brazilian party” dance attire and after checking herself out in the mirror they are promptly rolled back into place.

We get to work mastering the three beat steps – leading from the right / no the left / no the right / did I say right? I meant left… To be honest no one including the tutors seems to know which foot to lead from, which keeps us on our toes (literally) in a kind of Russian roulette kind of way.

Not having mastered the basic steps we are then paired up with partners. I pull the short straw and get a sweaty, shouty man. I always thought the true art of leading a dance was meant to be subtle and implicit - not through the means of hollering the words “RIGHT” and “LEFT” to the follower.

I holler back.

My holler does not contain the words RIGHT nor LEFT).

And just before I can get into the full swing of my hissy fit, a mass exodus begins from the classroom. We have literally been saved by both the bell and a throng of African dance enthusiasts eagerly waiting to get in.

“Was this your first time?” One of the tutors inquires.

Either she is impeccably polite or she has had worse first-timers than me.

I think I know which option I’d place my bet on.

Similarly you can bet your life it will also be my last time too.

September - If this is salsa, where are the tacos?

It’s the tail end of September and I need to squeeze in a dance. I cast my eye down the dance class menu with eyes primed for the words “beginner level”. There is only one. It’s Sunday Salsa.

I arrive with 10 minutes to spare & wait in a sweat-smelling hallway with two other complete beginners who look refreshingly more nervous than me.

We are greeted by a petite but perfectly curved Latino lady with raven curls, perfect skin and zero sense of humour. She collects our money, on behalf of her husband who will be taking the class, & asks if we have ever salsa-ed before.

“Only under the influence of tequila,” I respond.

(It’s an honest response.)

She doesn’t look amused.

She hands me back my fiver & tells me to leave.

I am told to come back & try a beginner’s class. I am a little bemused why this beginner’s class isn’t a beginner’s class, but decide I’m going to get nowhere with the Latino android & run out into the sunshine to eat ice-cream.

Two hours later I come back (mostly out of spite).

She clocks me immediately & whisks my five pounds note away again.

This time I’m allowed into the classroom. It doesn’t smell much better than the hallway.

The class is large & evenly balanced on a man to woman ratio. I cast my eye about the room & try to work out who the husband/tutor might be. There he is! The lithe man carved out of mahogany wearing a studded & bejewelled pair of jeans.

We all look sickly & wan in comparison.

Our tutor starts by teaching us the basic salsa steps. Thankfully these are pretty simple, provided you can count up to eight & walk. (This is possibly where I have been going wrong with my previous tequila salsa attempts on both counts).

Our tutor reminds me to smile whilst dancing.

I remind him that I’m British.

So I force myself to look at his bejewelled buttocks once more & crack a smirk.

We are fast learners & before you know it we are partnered up & counting our steps around the room. After each small sequence the girls are rotated to a different dance partner. I feel like a speed-dancing swinger.

We are told that this means we get to dance with all levels of male leaders. All levels that are within the beginner’s level that is. But truth be told, some are better at counting (& personal hygiene) than others so it’s refreshing to be rotated around the room like a doner kebab. And after an hour of stepping & spinning I am just about cooked.

All in all as a lady fresh to salsa it seems that if you have a good partner to lead you, then you really have little else to do but count to eight, smile & look pretty. I’m sure this rule can be applied to other relationships of life – provided you like to smile & follow. Emily Pankhurst, what would you say?

August - With bells on

Another month, another festival, another dance.

Here I am in the surprisingly sunny hills of the Brecon Beacons. The bruised skies above keep threatening downpours & I’m living on meteorological tenterhooks.

Contrarily dressed in sunglasses and wellies (& thankfully something in between) I’m up with the crows watching dawn break over the impending view. Technically speaking I’m not actually up with the crows; I was in fact out with the owls all night & have a giddy tiredness now to prove it. But I intend to stay up a little bit longer purely to watch the Morris Dancing workshop that is about to take place in the children’s area. 

When I embarked on this resolute project at the beginning of the year Morris dancing was at the very top of my list. But way back in January it seemed an utter impossibility. You don’t get your fair share of dance classes with sticks and hankies in London. For once fate is on my side.

I’m a sucker for anything echoing a folkloric past. I’m a sucker for any activity that can be combined with a nice pint of ale. So I bound over to the approaching group of dancers to see if I can have a go at waving a hankie with them. I find their leader. He’s the one with the tallest top hat, adorned with the most feathers & skulls & jingly bells & bottle tops. He hears my crashdance plea & the whole group kindly oblige to give myself & a roped-in friend our own public one-to-one crash-class.

The leader takes off his hat, his homemade purple tasselled mumming cloak & hands them to me to put on. They feel like lead armour. Finally I am handed a wooden truncheon. It looks like it could do some uncoordinated damage. I pity my dance partner & wonder why they didn’t start me off with a less threatening foolproof hankie.

And so with the sound of an accordion and the rhythm of a booted rhythm stick the dance begins. There’s a clacking of truncheons and a jingling of bells & fortunately for me & my patient dance partner I don’t manage GBH once. We are taught the dance sequence in simple sections, Then before you know it if we’ve got the whole sequence under our belts and hats and cloaks & finish the routine with a war-like cry as we raise our sticks above our heads.

Just an average Sunday.

And now for that pint of ale.

(with thanks to the Chepstow dance troop)

 

 

 

 

July - Two by Two

It’s the heart of festival season and I’m at Camp Bestival, a family-friendly boutique festival staged in the grounds of Lulworth castle in Dorset. (Yes it’s a very nice place*)

I’m determined to fit in a dance before the month is through so I opt for a sedate Sunday morning Waltz, hosted in the Come Dancing tent by a tutor who appears to be a tap dancing Butlins red coat, crossed with your dad. Yes your dad.

Our surrogate dancing dad is accompanied by his DJ son, three dancing demo “princesses” & a back catalogue of jokes so bad that his repertoire makes an average box of Christmas crackers feel like the Edinburgh fringe.

Camp Bestival holds the tradition of fancy dress on the Sunday. The theme this year is Animal Magic. I have come as a welly-wearing leopard. My dance partner who I met two days before is a fancy dress cross between a welly wearing alpaca and a lamb. Dinosaurs, bees, monkeys & the remainder of Noah’s Ark fill the rest of the tent two by two, setting a surreal Sunday morning backdrop for our class ahead.

And just when I thought things couldn’t get more bizarre, in walks Frankie Boyle. I’m glad to see that even celebrities like Frankie have made the effort with this year’s Animal Magic theme. Frankie’s come in a Homo Sapien outfit with magical beard. I’m a bit of a fan. I have a soft spot for this foul-mouthed Scotsmen. I instantly regret my leopard face paint.

Frankie takes a pew in the corner of the tent. He adopts the contemplation, beard-stroking poise of a man bemused. He remains there for the full hour studying the group of waltzing, welly-clad animals. He even remains there when surrogate dad tries to spark up comedy rapport, throwing in a few Boyle jokes for measure 

It’s enough to put you off your steps. But maybe there was animal magic in the air, for by the end of the hour I was waltzing around the dance floor as gracefully as any welly footed leopard could be.

*All jokes courtesy of my surrogate dad, & not Frankie Boyle.

June - All that Jazz

Following the pain of Bollywood Grooves I have decided to dumb-down my approach to Crash-dancing this month & opt for an “Absolute Beginners” class in Jazz.

I have no idea what Jazz dancing involves. Presumably hands. But I take comfort in knowing I fit the “Absolute Beginner” category perfectly & what’s more, I have hands.

Someone once told me “forewarned is forearmed”. With hindsight they took their maxim too literally & shot things with arrows. Yet this mantra has remained with me since, so pre-class I have a little online snoop to check out the lo-down of my soon to be Jazz tutor.

She is the unfeasibly tanned, ginger-haired love child of Bonnie Langford & David Dickinson. And just as I’m reaching to adjust the colour tones on my monitor I read the worst combination of words that any “absolute beginner” could possibly read: “recently seen as boot camp expert with simon cowell on the x factor…”

Oh joy.

The packed class is the size & temperature of a Kew Gardens’ hot house. There’s no time for introductions. There’s no time for gentle stretching. There’s not even time to imagine that there’s a wire attaching my head to the ceiling…

Instead, we begin with the renowned boot camp aerobics warm up. The girl next to me promptly sinks down into the box splits.

Absolute Beginners my arse.

And here lies the problem with these classes, whereby the level for the mass is set by the ability of the strongest dancers present who have a life time of dance experience under their size zero belts. It leaves any true beginners like myself out-daunted & out-danced. Sure we all have to learn. I would just prefer to learn with other true beginners; or possibly toddlers at this rate.

Following the physical humiliation of a shattering aerobics warm up we are then made to dance like Pussycat Dolls to a tortuous track ironically called “Hush Hush”. Wishing the track would stop, I shuffle in the back completely in awe of how vain folk can be. They eye-up their feline selves in the wall length mirrors and appear to come onto their very own reflections.

Meanwhile, I do a very good (if not somewhat puritanical) jazz routine. Unfortunately it doesn’t represent anyone else’s routine. I get a little frustrated that the others aren’t keeping pace & storm off in a diva hissy fit, leaving the Jazz hot house without their Nicole Scherzinger.