I started teaching a “Dance Jam” class at my gym last week.  It doesn’t really have a set format, mostly instructor’s choice, and I’ve decided that it’ll be a little bit of pop, a little bit of jazz, a little hip hop in there and a whole lotta fun. For next week, I’m going to prep a cardio-disco routine to the following mix:

1. Last Dance (12″ version) / Donna Summer
2. I Love the Nightlife / Alicia Bridges
3. Move On Up / Destination
4. Love’ Is Really My Game / Ann Nesby
5. Shake Your Groove Thing / Peaches & Herb
6. I’m Your Boogie Man / KC & The Sunshine Band
7. You Should Be Dancing / The Bee Gees
8. You make Me Feel (Mighty Real) / Sylvester
9. Disco Inferno / The Trammps
10. Fame / Irene Cara

Wow, the disco era was filled with one-hit wonders, wasn’t it?  I don’t think Alicia Bridges, Ann Nesby or Sylvester had hits other than the ones listed above.  I’m going to do some deejaying courtesy of Mixmeister and see if I can’t come up with my own smokin’ remix.

Tonight’s part 1 of 2 of the SYTYCD’s season finale. My prediction: Evan. I don’t think he’s the most deserving (I’m rooting for Jeanine or Brandon who are actually more versatile dancers) but I think his self-deprecating personality, combined with his electrifying solos, will catapult him to the top. I just don’t want Kayla to win. I think she’s a good dancer, but I want more than a good dancer. I want an intelligent dancer, someone who transcends dance. You can totally see this in her solos. They are nothing, blah. Kayla is nothing but a malleable piece of clay, an empty vessel for the next choreographer. In that way, she is good. She is a lamb willing to let the choreographer/artistic director take the lead. She won’t argue with them or insist on doing somethig her way. But when her body eventually breaks, when the injuries pile up, when she can no longer extend as far or jump as high, there will be nothing there. Unlike Evan or Jeanine who can choreograph or Brandon who can act and pile on the personality. Plus Kayla never did hip hop. How can she win?

Dance it Brandon/Evan/Jeanine! May the Force with either one of you tonight!

Yesterday, the artistic director of SB’s ballet school sent the following email to all the families:

Learning the art of classical ballet begins with the discipline of presentation as we step into the classroom to train. I would like to stress the importance of uniformity. We would like our young emerging artists to distinguish themselves with their dancing not their clothing. With this in mind listed below are the uniforms for this year. These are the only leotards which will be allowed in the classroom except for rehearsals, during which time the dress code will be relaxed. Additionally, no canvas shoes will be allowed. They get baggy, dirty and do not enhance the look of any foot! Only leather ballet shoes, please!

Bravo!  I highly applaud the emphasis on the dress code.  While sloppy clothing and hair might not necessarily equal a sloppy studio or sloppy teaching style, having strict requirements for appearance points to the rigorous nature of this particular school. Nothing drives me crazier than to see the little girls in Ballerina Girl’s school with their unkempt and un-bunned hair, tears in tights and untucked strings on ballet shoes. Partly because of this, and because of other factors, BG is moving to her brother’s ballet school in the fall. This will be her 3rd ballet studio in as many years!  :-(  Hopefully, if she wants to stick with it, it she’ll stay here for awhile.

I quit teaching dance a little more than a year ago to recharge the old batteries. Choreography was getting to be an absolute mental bear and I seemed to be spending every waking moment thinking and designing and coming up with routines. So I took a sabbatical and enrolled in as many classes as I could, reveling in being a student and soaking in everything my teachers said.

But I did miss teaching. I missed being the one in front of the class sharing the knowledge, demonstrating the moves, issuing the corrections. I teach kickboxing on Wednesday nights but I missed the creativity of dance.

So when a slot opened up in my gym that fit my scheduled, I snapped it up. I will now be teaching something called “Dance Jam Extreme” on Monday nights in September, which will basically be an instructor’s choice-type class. I’m already planning a curriculum of hip hop, jazz, maybe some modern, some Bollywood, some African, and a whole lot of fun.

This weekend is the annual DCAC Fitness Convention which I’m really looking forward to attending. More recharging, yay!

She’s the one in the pink shirt and skirt with the really long hair. They’re all so cute! There are two little boys that are absolutely amazing — enthusiastic and skilled.

For the summer, Science Boy is taking a break from all his ballet and science and becoming…

BBoy!

Check this out:

Yep, new season, new studio. Science Boy, or should I say, BBoy has been begging me for breakdancing lessons ever since Season 2 of “So You Think You Can Dance.” I made him wait until (a) he’s had a full year of gymnastics to develop his upper body strength, coordination and balance, and (b) he was 7. He could’ve started at 6 but I didn’t want him to be the youngest one in class.

His teacher’s a pretty cool cat, a young Vietnamese American spark plug named Joe who’s a member of a professional breakdancing crew. He starts and ends class with a demonstration–all the better to show the kids what they’re working toward, right? Cool thing that happened at the start of the very first class: he asked the kids to show him what they thought of as “breakdancing,” and my own little BBoy started doing his gymnastics cartwheels and handstands! Teach was impressed!

The first class involved learning the first few moves of the Top Rock, the Six Step and a freeze (there are many). BBoy’s been practicing all week. We’ll see how he does this Tuesday, which is when his class is.

PS: Ballerina Girl wants to take an Indian Bollywood dance class. It’s also held in BBoy’s breakdance studio, right beforehand. Blame SYTYCD again for this. Jai ho!

Summer’s barely begun and already people are forcing me to think about Fall. Yep, FALL. As in September. As in forking money over to studios and gyms. This morning, I had to hand over moolah for “priority registration” at my kids’ gymnastics gym. I put that in quotes because I have a sinking feeling that it’s all just a ploy to rake in the revenue way before they have to deliver the goods. Wouldn’t that all businesses could operate this way. GM probably wouldn’t be bankrupt right now if they could make people pay full for a car months ahead of time before they actually got the stinking thing.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, money. Today was also the deadline to register for fall ballet. Science Boy will continue with Ballet 1 and Boys’ Class, but I had to make a decision for Ballerina Girl. Which studio? I couldn’t keep her in her current one because of scheduling, so I had a choice to make: my studio, or SB’s? My studio has a Sunday afternoon Ballet 1 class, which is mucho convenient for working mom me. With soccer, it’ll divide the running around we do on the weekend to two days and won’t pack all the activities on just the Saturday. But that’s the only advantage. I happen to know the teacher for that class and…well, she may have a bubbly personality but word has it she’s unreliable and is a frequent no-show. Plus tuition here is almost double what it would be at SB’s studio.

SB’s studio doesn’t have the Sunday class but the tuition is extremely reasonable AND the teacher, who I personally know, is an awesome lady. Energetic, a young mom, SAB alum, ex-Joffrey. Plus she has a son in the school who is a classmate of SB’s. And did I mention the tuition is very reasonable?

So it looks like SB and BG will be at the same ballet school in the fall. Saturdays will be hectic, what with needing to squeeze in soccer games somewhere in there too. But we can do it. Somehow. Even if I have to enlist my sis as a bus service once in awhile so I can attend my own ballet class.

Ahhhhh…the trials and tribulations of a dancing working mom with dancing/soccer-playing/gymnastics-tumbling kids.

One of my teachers will be performing with her dance troupe this Saturday and my whole family will be in the audience. It promises to be something different to watch, something that my (poor) husband, whom I’ve dragged to ballets and musicals, might appreciate more given that the dancing will be a lot more improv and athletic. It’ll be our first live modern dance concert ever and I for one am really looking forward to it.

Speaking of dance perforomances, thank GOD the new season of So You Think You Can Dance is back on! I’m already hooked even though it’s just audition time because of the return of three compelling auditioners from last year who came so very close but didn’t make the top 20 (I especially love the musical theater guy from last night, Katee’s roommate and the powerful 19-year old male dancer who performend to Orff’s Carmina Burana. Sorry, didn’t quite catch their names yet).

Dance on!

Every dancer falls in love with a certain brand/pair of ballet shoe, and for me that shoe is the Capezio Juliet, leather, size 4, wide. It fits like a glove, the pink is muted and is very comfortable.

But after only eight months, I find myself needing to get a new pair because the interior of my shoes have gone to crap. The lining has disintegrated and there’s a big giant hole in both shoes right where my big toe rest, and when I dance, both my big toes shoot into the holes and constrict blood flow.

For my new pair, not only have I decided to go the canvas route, I’m also trying out a new brand, from a company called Wear Moi. Apparently, they’re French and brand new. The shoes are comfy and snug, the lining is cotton instead of this fleecy thing (which was the biggest selling factor in addition to comfort), and best of all, the elastics are pre-sewn. I was concerned about the dirt factor but the salesperson who sold them to me said all I needed to do was throw the shoes in the wash and air dry them and they’ll be good as new.

Looking forward to dancing in my new pair of shoes.

My new Wear Moi canvas ballet shoes

Man, I haven’t posted in awhile. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of exciting things happening. First of all, I just wanna give a quick mention that this weekend is the opening weekend of that most fabulous movie, “Star Trek.” Y’all go see it. I hear it’s a celestial wonder.

Okay, for a dance update:

• Science Boy is continuing his twice-weekly ballet classes. I don’t really see any improvement on his part as far as posture or grace or rhythm, but then again I attribute that to the fact that he is a boy, and for boys, I hear coordination with these things come later. Right? His gymnastics however is improving by leaps and bounds. If the kid can walk down the sidewalk on his hands he’d do it. Great cartwheels, great handstands. Which is why I’ve taken him out of one of his ballet classes and enrolled him in…BREAKDANCING! He’s gonna love this.
• Ballerina Girl has a recital coming up in June. I’m a little amused and weirded out by the fact that both my kids exhibit traditional boy/girl behavior, meaning SB is good at math and science, likes to build buildings and blow things up, and has no grace to speak of, while OTOH BG likes pink, tea parties, tutus, princesses, loves to dance, has great coordination and can follow instructions really well. Which means she is doing very, very well in her dance classes, so much so that she’s smack in the middle of their formation for recital and the other girls look to her for choreography cues. Makes me proud. **sniff**

Because of all these kid activities, I’ve unfortunately had to suspend going to dance classes on the weekend, which means Advanced Latin Jazz on Tuesdays, Kickboxing on Wednesdays (the class I teach), and ballet on Thursday and Friday. I’d rather not go to ballet on Friday but I don’t want to have just one class a week. So off I go tonight before going to Star Trek.

Aaaah…the weekend is finally here. Enjoy the brief sunshine and have a great weekend!