This is the time of my life—or the start of it. I would never have imagined myself being on stage with 15 other women wearing cutoffs, fishnets, muscle shirts and combat boots, putting most of the old baggage out of my head and shaking my booty with the best of them.
It all started innocently a couple of years ago, when I finally screwed up my courage to use a gift certificate to DanceFX. The only kind of ballet dancer I could imagine myself to be was the comedy swan played by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. I remember heckling the modern dance group in high school. I just didn’t understand it. Besides, they were all the cool girls.
While I’m a longtime fan of “Dancing with the Stars,” my one and only ballroom class didn’t inspire me to keep going. Every year there is a fundraiser for Keep Athens-Clarke County Beautiful at Little Kings. The Modern Pinups did a number, and I thought, “I want to do that.” So, tap it was. The Pinups were another story. After all, there were tryouts and women who had been dancing since the age of four.
The actual beginner class started in August, but for some reason, I kept piling up excuses why I couldn’t or shouldn’t go. Too old, too fat, too uncoordinated—just to name a few.
My brain understood the movements, but it wasn’t trickling down to my feet. Had I watched all those Shirley Temple movies in vain? My teacher was very kind and kept going over it, and the other students in the class were also encouraging. I just kind of stayed in the background, not wanting to ask questions or draw attention to the fact that I was a major klutz. My mother always told me my middle name should have been Grace.
At the end of the spring session, my teacher, Britton, said she had been wanting to teach burlesque aerobics for three years, and they finally gave her a spot in the DanceFX schedule. She asked; I said, “Why not?” I could at least try.
Somehow, I had blocked the aerobic part of the class name out of my head and was rudely awakened after stretching to find myself on the floor doing a whole song’s worth of crunches. But wait! They were followed by squats, traveling squats and cardio. Was I going to survive? I was rewarded with a combo (several dance moves choreographed to a different song every week). I was starting to feel just a little bit like a dancer. It was fun, even though my caboose was going forward while everyone else’s was going backward. Among other things.
I looked forward to Sundays. I made friends. I started to loosen up, so I could bump and grind to the likes of Taylor Swift or Beyonce and a lot of artists I’d never heard of. No matter, it was the beat that was important.
So, now I’m a full-fledged member of the Apprentice Company. There are no rules in burlesque; the lower I go and the more exaggerated my movements, the more I enjoy it. I’m fine with “stick out your boobies, shake your booty until you feel like it’s going to come loose, and touch yourself.”
I’m still a little stiff when I dance, but the days that I don’t worry about getting the combo just right are like nothing else. It cleans the cobwebs out. I feel alive, like I could fly around the world and not be tired.
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