The suspense is killing y’all!
posted in Dance, OmegaDotter, OmegaMom |Sooooo…Did OmegaDad return home with the blue Spiderman backpack as threatened?
Well, no. He returned home with a pink thing that, even though it wasn’t a “pully” kind of backpack, which she particularly wanted, had lots of compartments and a water bottle, so it fully satisfied the dotter.
Onto other things: A few weeks ago, I signed up for a ballet class for adults at the dance studio the dotter goes to for ballet. I’ve gone to one class. Last week I fizzled at the last minute, blaming Halloween pumpkin-carving and dinner makings. This week?
Well, I think I’m not going to go.
Why?
Um. Y’know…I don’t really like ballet.
There. I said it. It just doesn’t do anything for me. And the class was all bar work. Lots of pliés and footwork. In a word: boring.
So I’ve been watching the dotter’s ballet class, and it’s fun. Her gymnastics class is fun. They don’t push the kids; they move them at a slow pace, repeating things, making sure they learn each new thing well, and making sure it’s just plain fun.
Why can’t they do that for adults? The dotter won’t be stuck into bar work for another few years. But she’s getting lots of dancing and lots of basic moves and having fun.
I wanna have fun. I wanna take a gymnastics class that lets me bounce on a trampoline and run an obstacle course where you do lots of somersaults and walk on a balance beam (over and over and over again) at a very basic level before being asked to do more. I want a basic class that admits that, yes, adults can be klutzes, and, like children, need to repeat the same thing over and over and over again before it sinks into the kinetic unconscious. This is why I back out of aerobics classes or step classes that are too advanced: they whip you from one combo to the next when you’re just starting out, and the next thing you know, while the entire class is be-boppin’ in one direction, you’re doing a box-step in the other direction. I don’t get embarrassed by it any more, it’s just the way I am. But I do get frustrated, and I do end up box-stepping right into someone who’s be-boppin’, and it just isn’t fun.
But, when I do get a class where they take it slow and let klutzes like me learn the basic combos a bit at a time, and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse them before moving on, I do have fun.
Klutzes of the world, unite! We need to demand fun classes that are slow-paced in the learning aspects, but not slow-paced in movement!
Woohoo! Join me, fellow rebels!
