hip hop

I can safely say that I’m the worst hip hop dancer that I’ve ever seen.  I had my first dance lesson tonight. What a blast. Seriously. 

Because I joined mid-way through the season, there wasn’t much in the way of introduction. We just went straight into learning the dance moves. There were 3 of us in the class - perfect size for learning.  The song our instructor, Stu, chose for tonight’s lesson was slower, and I think that was suppose to benefit me. But not being able to move my body in a certain way to a slower song just means that it’s more noticeable that I can’t move my body in that way!

In the warm-up it was clear that I was going to struggle. I’m too...straight and stiff. Give me a break! I’m a figure skater. We’re all about good posture and square shoulders. This is totally opposite to the core of hip hop dancing.

The warm-up started with moving our head and neck, followed by shoulders and body and, finally, feet. I could not get the neck movement. How does one isolate their neck like that? Stu moves his neck like he doesn't have a head or shoulders! I can’t move my neck without moving my head or shoulders first! Definitely need alot of work in that area.

In total, I think we learned moves for about 5 counts of 8. Not much at all - but SO much work! Stu said there are 3 core things to learn when learning to dance: 1. timing, 2. choreography, and 3. style. I can do 1 and 2, but 3 is a bitch. At one point, I thought that I was doing all the same “steps” as Stu, but his version looked SO different than mine! That was all in the style. He moves like a hip hop dancer. I move like a figure skater trying to do hip hop! It ends up looking quite disastrous.

But man, did I ever have fun. By the end of the lesson, I could do the steps just by listening to the music. I was feeling it. That was awesome. With more lessons and a whole lot of practice, I hope to eventually get the style. Just don’t be surprised if you see me walking around trying to move my neck as if it's a completely separate entity from the rest of my body!