A world of hurt; or, it’s amazing what the human body can do

Had been planning to go to Lines’ Dance Center’s all-you-can-dance ($5 for 4 1/2 hours!) with Lisa for a few weeks now. Sunday was the big day. Unfortunately, Saturday, I made the poor decision to down a 6 oz. serving of chai at about 4PM (I am extremely caffeine-sensitive), which resulted in me staying up for pretty much the ENTIRE NIGHT. I mentioned it to her as we were headed to Lines on Sunday that I had stayed up all night–oh, was it a hot date? No, I didn’t have a hot date. But my intestines had a hot date with my toilet.

So, on two hours of sleep, I barted over to SF with Lisa and stepped into class.

1. Hip hop. I am not hip, and I do not hop. It was really enjoyable, though, despite the fact that the sight of myself in the mirror attempting to “look cool” was horrifying. Am soooo not a hip hop dancer, but it was super fun!
2. Modern. Well, supposedly the day was geared towards beginning dancers, but this class was definitely much more a fast, fast, complicated intermediate, replete with slides and falls. It confirmed my hatred of floor work and therefore my firm commitment to ballet.
3. Absolute beginning ballet. Not quite a real ballet class–no barres etc. Fine.
4. Break! We actually munched on our sandwiches and bran muffins and chocolate in the conference room…it was kind of neat to try and imagine what kind of amazing, famous choreographers and dancers may have once graced that room…
5. Musical theater. Fun!! Easy, not terribly strenuous except for the butt and thigh-murdering warm up routine, but cheesy. Very cute instructor with a beautiful tush.
6. Flamenco cancelled…boo. But instead, a 45 min Chinese folk dancing class, which was really interesting. Not much in the way of explaining the steps…it was very much a follow-the-teacher-monkey-see-monkey-do class, which I suppose is quite right for these sorts of short, sampling type classes. Low impact, except for when I (accidentally) punched myself in the left leg.
7. Jazz. I did maybe half this class, but was finally feeling the effects of no sleep and minimal food. So I sat down with Lisa and stretched for the second half.

After class we had a fabulously starchy dinner at a Chinese restaurant–three different kinds of noodles! Mine had roasted duck skin in it! Decadent and wholly satisfactory. I was flexing my legs under the table and thinking, gee, if I’m sore now, I’m going to be hurting tomorrow.

Today I feel like I have been run over by a garbage truck. Everything hurts. Still, I went to ballet this morning and am planning to go to class Tuesday and Thursday as well. I can’t even imagine how professional dancers do it…they do more than twice the hours we did, at a much much higher level. That, my friends, is why a few of my ballet teachers are still dancing and teaching class in their 80s.