#whitegirldancing

Jenny takes up hip hop dancing, no really.

My friend is going through a nasty divorce and wanted to try something new, so she asked me to sign up to a Hip Hop dance class with her. Sure, I thought. How hard can this be?  I can move, or at least my sister can.  She was a professional dancer. Surely it must run in the genes somehow. Turns out, NOT.

 I’m a middle-aged women whose skin is so white its reflection can be seen from the International Space Station, so watching me Hip Hop dancing is like watching Embarrassing Bodies on Channel Nine: once the initial curiosity wears off you’re left with psychological scarring that haunts your dreams and makes you want to smash every mirror in the house.  

 Nevertheless I turned up full of excitement, confidence even.  Let’s go!

 Hang on, wait a minute! This is the first time this decade I have danced in front of people without the benefit of alcohol fuelled courage and Eighties pop nostalgia.  Here I am sober, in front of people I don’t know and they can move.  This is really, really, REALLY hard.

 At the end of term there is a performance at a pub in St Kilda. The song we’ll be gyrating to is Gold Digger by Kanye West, so I’ll be an ambassador for misogyny who reinforces negative stereotypes about women. I could quote the lyrics to demonstrate my point but that would involve quoting the whole song.  

 But I’ll worry about that later because this is SO MUCH FUN and such a release.  Lots of popping, pumping, thrusting and releasing my inner Beyonce.

 We’ll be performing on stage in front of real-life PAYING people: I’m expected to ask my nearest and dearest to pay $25 to see me Hip Hop dance.  They say when you perform you need to connect with the audience and give something back.  Hopefully that something back is not their money.

 I haven’t sent out any invites yet.  I need to get the wording right. I’m thinking of adding a warning:  what you will see contains explicit dancing and I am likely to injure myself and express course language.

 Then there are the costumes. Our theme is black and gold trashy ho. As I’m in between jobs and my suburban attempts at gold-digging have left me short of cash, I’m recycling clothes from my wardrobe, spraying them with adhesive and rolling them in gold glitter. I’m currently less Dr Dre and more Dame Edna, but don’t judge.  

 Dancing is about expressing a story, so facial expression is very important.  I have a way to go.  I’m currently less Dr Dre and more Daryl Somers, but don’t judge.

 Our dance group spans all shapes and sizes, and our ability ranges between competent and imagined. The full-length mirrors at the dance studio destroy the nicely crafted image I have of myself in my head.  The image I see tells 1000 words and most of them are @!#%%, @!#%%.

 Mind you, I think Hip Hop dancing is a release that most middle-aged white women need.  I’ve had many requests from friends wanting me to teach them some moves: popping, pumping and thrusting, they really lose their minds until one of the women disapproves and everyone returns to being super-uptight, middle-aged and white. Back in our comfort zone, we return to being the wrong kind of bitches.

 But this is SO MUCH FUN. I’m finding more and more opportunities to express myself through the power of dance.  No need to yell at the kids to “go to bed”.  I simply shake my ample booty, rotate my hips, 2,3,4, put on my seductive pout and they run to their bedrooms in no time.