Dance 411, or should I say 911?

Today my classmate Ty and I went to Dance 411 for a beginner hip hop class called Juice. As you can see from the picture we were hella excited and ready to be all Hippy and Hoppy. On the way there we even sang a little diddy that went something like, "We going to hiiiiiip hop, it's gon be fuuuuunnnnn, and we gon liiiiiiiike it..."

Upon arriving we paid our first time class fee of $10 (not bad I must say) and waited for the Reggae class to end. And that's when I saw her - a girl walked in with the EXACT hair I want. It was natural, curly, wild, long, and uber-cute; turns out, she was our teacher. Before class started, Ty and I were kind of just standing around while all the younger, more agile dancers gyrated to the music. Some people were talking, some were stretching, some were biting their nails and smiling nervously (uhhh, that would be Ty and me). We warmed up and the teacher (I think her name was Mia) had us doing crazy push ups and ab work. My energy was already spent before we had learned a single step.

The dance was hella difficult; it involved scoops, knee sliding, kicks, pointing and all sorts of other dancy-goodness. Ty and I held in there (in the back of course) trying not to look too elderly and out of shape amongst all those youngins. She wouldn't allow the air conditioning to be turned on, she said, "Y'all supposed to be dancers, you're supposed to be sweating." I begged to differ. We sweat so much, my pores are exhausted. And as the class continued, Mia's clothes got fewer and fewer. When class first started she had on two shirts, a scarf, sweatpants, etc. That scarf got thrown probably 5 seconds into class. The first shirt maybe 10 minutes into class, and the second shirt left her shortly after. Now she had on a bikini top and sweatpants. I wish it were me. So not only did she have the hair I want, but the body as well. We learned the dance in sections and kept adding on until we'd learned the whole thing. Then she broke the class up into two groups, Ty and I were group 1. We went back and forth doing the entire routine alternating groups (somewhere in the middle of that Ty disappeared). I loved and hated it at the same time because I wanted to get everything down and some moves just weren't clicking with me. I finally spotted Ty, almost in the fetal position in the corner. He'd given up on life. He said he felt light-headed, and really I did too - but something made me keep going. He joined back in for the cool down though. The class totally kicked our butts. Most of the folks in class stuck around for "Advanced Juice" which followed, but Ty and I hauled ass out of there. And remember how happy and excited we were before class? Well here's us after class:All and all, I don't think the class was beginner level. But it was fun nonetheless. It was what we wanted: an hour of hip-hoppy goodness - we just didn't expect to be so close to death afterwards. Dance 411 has so many fun-sounding classes on their schedule (Salsa, Jazz, ATL Crank, Pole Dancing, etc) that I can't go to because I have school. But the weekend ones I can (and will) definitely try out. For bustin' my butt, they get an A++.