Dancing with the Stars

In retrospect, it may not have been the best idea to sign up for the Adult Jazz class with Tiffany. After all, I am a middle-aged white woman who does her best dancing after a margarita or two. But I couldn't resist....

The class began at 8:30 and I arrived exactly on time, brimming with enthusiasm. I got a few curious glances as I entered the studio wearing my “dance your ass off” t-shirt, dance pants, and snazzy Jazz shoes, but I figured they were just admiring my shirt.

I soon noticed that, not counting Tiffany, I was older than all the other students...by several decades. In fact, they looked like they were contestants on The Bachelor (the first indication that I was out of my league). One thing was for sure: I was not going home with a rose.

The class began with some warm up exercises led by Brittany, the instructor. We started with a dozen or so laps around the room. Then she had us jump to a squat with our hands placed on the floor, kick our feet straight back, return them under our butts and stand (repeating about 25 times). “Hey! Stop the bus!” I said. “I think we’re doing squat thrusts!”

I hadn't done a squat thrust since 5th grade and they were just as painful as I remembered.  And the bachelorettes seemed to enjoy them.

The red flags were as subtle as a sledge hammer.

As we transitioned from one torturous exercise to another I grunted to Tiffany..."Are we ever going to dance?"  

Brittany moved on to the push-ups. I looked around to see if we'd taken a wrong turn and had accidentally ended up at Fort Jackson. “If they make us scale the walls I’m outta here,” I threatened.

Finally, we got to the dancing. It started out easy enough: 8-counts of choreography. We ran through it twice and I was feeling pretty darn good about my dancing. That is, until Brittany said "Let's speed it up.” We did it double time. "Now to the music", Brittany chirped. The music was twice as fast as the double-time (e.g. quadruple time). 

"Let's move on", sang Brittany. "You'll remember this next segment from last year". Last year??  But we weren't in the class last year!

Now if this wasn't a red flag, call me colorblind.

The "segment from last year" included a pirouette. Brittany informed us that we could choose to make it a double pirouette if we preferred. Right.

My pirouette resembled a "ring around the rosie".

The pirouette was followed by a high kick...well, at least for the rest of the class. I followed up my ring around the rosie with a stubbed toe.

For the next 20 minutes it was more of:

"Let's speed it up!"

"Adding on..."

"Double time."

"Adding on..."

By 9:15 I was begging for squat thrusts.

Mercifully, the class came to an end, but not before we had to break into 2 groups and perform for each other. I was wishing my water bottle contained a margarita. On the way out Tiffany and I stopped to talk to Brittany. Tiffany jokingly asked if there was a Senior Adult Jazz class we could switch to and Brittany let her know that she could attend the Monday night Beginner Adult Jazz class.

Then she looked at me, and said (very slowly), “I’m sorry, honey, but you're out of luck. The Special Ed Jazz class is full”. 

Okay, so I made that part up.  But I could tell she was thinking it!