Yesterday I thought I would place a sort of, ‘And now for something completely different’, post on my Facebook and Instagram page. On Facebook most of my ‘Friends’ are either involved in triathlon or some other sport or they are family, so in fact I was a bit hesitant about putting something completely different on at all.
Even though I had mentioned quite often this year that I had brought in a bit of variety to me at home training sessions, that being choosing a class of You Tube put on by The New York City Ballet. Steve and I tried loads of new classes during lockdown that we had trolled the internet to find. We were after something that would be a useful extra session for keeping our bodies supple and loose in a time when we were only leaving the house at all to go running in the woods.
The Littlehampton Wave brand new swimming pool was closed. The exercise time was said to be one hour a day outside the house and we were already stretching that a bit to keep one of our sports disciplines going half well. The classes we started with, were stretching groups, a bit of Yoga, and various dancing classes since I have danced most of my life for love of the art. I tried a half dozen different Hula classes for a while, which was good for my back and hips I found with arms and leg movements.
Steve just kept on trying more and more looking for something that would be ideal for me, knowing I needed more that a run every other day during the tight restrictions. We both thought that he had struck gold when he found the New York City Ballet Workout. There were two, one hour long classes and we started with the easier one. Steve was of course a complete novice as far as actually doing ballet himself although like me he is a ballet lover. He has tried very hard to get some of the movements but he now knows most of the ballet terms too, he can get through the whole session and has come on rather well. It has surprised me anyway.
I started dancing when I was four years old. My mum went out to work JUST to pay for my dancing classes. I started with a Tap class and then after a recommendation she enrolled me at a ballet for beginner’s class too. Later at the suggestion of the tap teacher added acrobatics. My mum was always saying that it kept me off the streets, something that she was never going to allow. I loved all of them and I continued at ordinary dancing school level until I left school. I joined Worthing Musical Comedy Society. Once I was working my mother stopped paying for my lessons and so the dancing school days ended an that allowed me to still dance in the company. Two shows per year locally and a lot of fun with my new friends.
Later I took up ballroom dancing and paid for my own lessons. I continued with that thinking that I would like to be a teacher but that path was too expensive when most of my wages were taken for household use by my parents. I continued to dance though one way and another.
There was a very mixed response when yesterday I posted a video of me dancing along to with the Dancers on the TV screen. Most people were very kind when responding to this octogenarian practicing with the prompting of the voice over on TV. I have always enjoyed these classes enormously. Just a few responses were joking in nature with the surprise that I would show this side of my lockdown training.
Only one was quite rude but then this good friend is always rude to me, I think he thinks me fair game and I am happy to be the butt of anybody’s humour. His comment under the video was “Yup, She’s finally lost it”, which I thought was a little bit mean Clive Patterson-Lett, because I thought you knew the I had….. ‘Lost it’ in many ways, a very long time ago!
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