So You Think You can Dance?

 My struggle with the gym has been well documented. Well readers, stand up and cheer cause I went to the gym EVERY DAY THIS WEEK!!! I am fairly certain that has never happened in this lifetime. I am discovering an added bonus to daily gym attendance (besides my new found rock hard abs). Going to the gym makes for excellent blogging material.

Monday I took a kick boxing class. It was fun and challenging. I plan on trying to make this class weekly. Wednesday afternoon my 58 year old father and I took a Core and Glutes class. I am still limping around from that. Thursday was my favorite Pilates class. Then Friday, Dad joined me again for another cardio class. This one was much more choreographed and the sight of my dad trying to follow the complicated aerobic steps was quite entertaining. He is a trouper for going though and an excellent gym buddy!

What about Tuesday you ask? Well, Tuesday was quite the adventure. There was a class on the schedule I had never tried before called DanceMix. The description said:

This class incorporates all types of dance moves in high/lo impact combinations. You won’t want to miss it!

Doesn’t that sound fun and relatively painless. I figured we would do salsa, hip-hop maybe a little belly dancing- it would be a blast. I recruited my friend M to go with me. We walked in and immediately noticed not everyone was dressed in your typical work out clothes. They looked like the picture above. One of them was even wearing a newsboy cap.

Then the teacher comes in and starts asking various class members if she had gone over a certain “combination” with them. This is where I must call upon my vast knowledge of dancing from years (3) of watching Dancing With the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance?. She starts doing these complicated hip-hop moves. Everyone in the class assures her they have in fact learned that part.

M and I look at each other scared of what we are about to embark on. But then the class starts and it is just a fun warm up with some cute funky little dance moves. I am feeling pretty good and thinking I might have a career as one of Britney’s back up dancers. My dream is cut short by the teacher saying, “All right, now we will start the routine. Those of you who are new (that means M and me) don’t worry, you will catch on, we have been working on this for quite a while.”

The routine begins and is what I can only describe as something Shane Sparks may have choreographed for one of his pupils. I was beyond lost. I maybe got 1 hip thrust out of the whole 3 minute “routine.” The poor teacher kept trying to slow things down so we would catch on, but M and I pretty much just hopped around and tried not to look too “white” (although everyone in the class including the instructor was in fact white, they clearly had trained as dancers at some point in their life).

At the end of the class, one girl encouraged us by saying, “Keep coming back, it is really fun and you will catch on!” The instructor also said, “You guys caught on really well” which is code for, “For the love of God, please don’t come back to my class.” A part of me really wants to go back to triumph over this stupid dance. The larger saner part of me thinks I should really quit while I am ahead and stick to kick boxing and pilates.

This post is for a contest going on right now over at the Parent Bloggers Network. The winner gets a pair of Ryka shoes and I really think my current gym shoes may just be what is holding me back from being the dancer I was intended to be. Maybe the Ryka’s are the answer.