Merry Christmas

So the last class of 2012 was Raggatone! 

And we certainly went out with a bang. 

More of a jam than the traditional class format, we spent the hour getting down to some hype tracks, practising our best (ahem) moves and drinking champagne - whoop! 

Highlights definitely have to include @MlleGinger's inspection of the fastest booty shaker (clearly it was me, we all know I've got mad Raggatone skills) and doing the dutty wine for a good long while - and although my neck may still not have recovered, it was definitely worth it!! 

You know we're all going to be getting DOWN on New Year's Eve. 

Overall, it was a perfectly fitting end to what has been a simply wonderful year filled with loads of laughter (it's actually because of this that we're all in such good party season-shape - did you know you burn about 3 calories every time you laugh between 10 and 40 if you laugh solidly for fifteen minutes), fun and friendship. 

Here's to more fun in 2013. 

You can leave your hat on

To celebrate the end of year's worth of waacking, we had a waacking/all styles battle/jam in the middle hour of Thursday night 

Waacking came first.

WOW must be the only accurate word to describe what happened next. Why you ask? Well take Dance Station Waacking Disciples + Battle + Christmas + excellent tunes and you do the maths!! 

Suffice to say this combination definitely brought out the inner diva in us all. 

But in no-one was this more apparent than in @Trixiecantswim. Taking on @CarleeBanks in, at first glance, a seemingly demure outfit she was out for the kill. In the most stylish and hilarious strip tease I've ever seen (and obviously I've seen tonnes so I am a clearly an expert) the belt came off first and then the dress to reveal sparkly gold hot pants and a 'GEEK' emblazoned t-shirt with an 'and what attitude' - resulting in mass hysteria and @CarleeBanks collapsing on the floor. A well deserving waacking winner. 

Second came all-styles. 

For which the soundtrack was dope!!!! Seriously when are you ever going to hear Gangnam Style, the Spice Girls and 'Under the Sea' in the same set?1?!?!?!?!

In this round the most deserving winner was @Bgirljulie who busted out some pretty impressive floor moves, knocking the socks off all other competitors - it must have been her secret santa b-girl hat spurring her on! 

Then there was only one award left to be given out. This went to @SusieQ_licious for the most outrageous christmas costume - she came as an actual christmas tree (with lights and everything). 

WERK!!!! 

But I haven't revised!!!!

Thursday night was the last set of classes of 2012, and in ballet that could only mean one thing ....... VOCAB QUIZ!!!!!

This is where the two for one nature of Thursday night ballet is put to the test and we all compete for the coveted "ballet vocab champion" title. 

Cue accelerating pulse rates, sweaty palms and numerous cases of serious exam nerves - I'm not kidding, rescue remedy was definitely being swigged by some like it was the elixir of life! I may have survived finals but this was on a whole other level - especially due to a distinct lack of revision.

Last minute cramming definitely did not help the situation either with @MlleGinger doing a heads-shoulders-knees-and-toes inspired description of the grand battement exercise and certain members of the class giving certain other members erroneous answers. Thus when it reached the last twenty minutes of class and it was time to begin the quiz, emotions were definitely running high. 

The standard was very high (clearly we've improved from last year or people were cheating hmmm) but there reached a very tense tie between @Trixiecantswim and @DelphiRose97 who both got 19/20 (and they call me the geek - talk about the kettle calling the pot black).  Obviously their costa study sesh paid off. 

Thus they had to have an all-out spelling battle, with @DelphiRose97 eventually stealing the title back from @TrixiCantCwim (the winner last year) by correctly spelling: rond de jambe en dehors. It must be due to her extreme youth (younger = less wisdom = more space available for remembering french). 

Ah well now we've got a whole year to prepare for the next one. 

Answers:
1. Plié =  Bend on two legs
2. Fondu: Bend on one leg (to melt)
3. Tendu: To Stretch
4. Glissé: To glide the leg along the floor just coming off slightly at the end
5. Port de bras: Carriage of the arms
6. Rond de Jambe: Round of the leg
7. En Dehors: Away from the body
8. Derrier: To the rear 
9. En l'air: In the air 
10. Sauté: A jump in first position that stays in first position
11. Changemont: A jump in third position in which the feet swap
12. De côté: To the side
13. Premier:  First 
14. deuxième: Second
15. Demi Bras: Flower Arms 
16. Allegro: A jumping exercise 
17. Cloche: As a bell (swinging the between front and back)
18. Bras Bar: Arms Low
19. Petit: Small 
20. Devant: In front 

Make it Happen!

What do you get when you add @MlleGinger, Waacking, the DS Waackers, Dance Station, fancy dress and Christmas? 

MAGIC. MADNESS. EPICNESS (yes I know that's not a real word). INSANE amounts of FUN!  

Take your pick, any of these answers are equally true. 

In fact I'm generally quite surprised that we're all still alive today. There were too many things that we  love condensed into that studio in an hour last night (great dancing, great music, great friends, great costumes, christmas, the list goes on) for it not to be extremely risky. It's really quite miraculous that nobody happened to spontaneously combust, especially given the amount of flammable material that was floating around. 

It certainly proved once again that we definitely don't do things by halves, the costumes from last christmas were pretty great, but this year things went to a whole other level. From elves to candy cane queens, we had a whole host of christmassy characters prancing above Richmond station last night. Making it, one of the many but perhaps one of the most extreme, times when I've wondered why nobody at the bus stop down below has called the mental health services on us before - especially when the Barbara Streisand Jingle Bells song dropped and certain people screamed bloody murder. 

That was it though. It was like the match to the flame. If the mood was not already hype enough, with the costumes and the amount of christmas spirit floating around, that track just tipped it over the edge, the high kicked in (and quite frankly still hasn't left) and things become a lot more hazy around the edges. 

If the Ginger Elf wasn't one of the main culprits, I'd have felt sympathetic for her having to face the daunting task of controlling us all,  this was, after all,  perhaps one of the only times I've ever heard her yell (or is it squeal?!?!?!?!? - i'm really not sure what elves sound like) "CALM DOWN" more times than "FIERCE FACE," which, for once, was happening all on its own. 

Certain parts of the combination were pretty damn fast, nobody is denying that old Barbara has a set of lungs on her, but were we allowed to give in? Oh no. It's quite hard to argue with one of Santa's little helpers when they stand there and state "I've made it now, and I'm not changing it just MAKE IT HAPPEN" - after all, we all want to be on the nice list don't we? But whilst on other occasions the amount of jerking and dashing through the snow and free-styling and staying on beat required, might have sent us cowering into the corner (or running to @KleioBows for comfort), not last night. 

Just like it says in Frosty the Snowman ("there must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found.....,")   "There must have been some ginger spice in those costumes wrapped all around, because when they placed them on themselves, they began to dance around!" And so instead of panic, the result  was WERK! 

Just reliving it in my head is making me giddy, like a five year old after eating an entire tube of the old-stylee blue smarties. 

Look out for footage soon. 

In the Jungle, the might jungle

..... the lion *dances* tonight.

Being the last official raggatone class of the year, it was with great trepidation ..... oh wait was that only me?? .... fine, I mean anticipation, that we stepped out onto the studio floor at 8.30 on Thursday night. 

This fervour of feeling stemmed from the fact that a re-cap of all the moves we are supposed to have 'mastered' by now was inevitable being that it is party season and raggatone is a party dance. 

Thus we found ourselves practicing all we've done so far so that after a pack-inspired entrance we could 'freestyle' raggatone-stylee. 

You know you're in trouble when you can't even do the first move of the combo, seriously if you can't high-five other people what is the realistic probability of being able to high five yourself whilst the target hand is moving along with the rest of you? I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty certain it doesn't lie within the 90% confidence interval. 

This is problematic because it comes before there's even been the suggestion of making your way (albeit very slowly) to the ground and busting some moves down there. Whilst for some members of our cohort, progress has definitely been made in this area (although i don't like to look too closely so I could just be being fooled, others of us are still far more likely to bust a back as we continue to look more like dying frogs than fierce freestylers.

However, all is not lost!!! 

The freestyles were supposed to reflect all that we have learnt so far, and for some of these moves, the environment of the studio was just not apt. Oh no. The truth will be revealed when this year the bells begin to toll and going to church takes on a WHOLE new meaning - seriously "Little Donkey" is just crying out to be jammed to don't you think. 

A schizophrenic at a tea party

In waacking, one size does most certainly not fit all. There are different 'fits' within the style, and as our waacking disciple pilgrimage has passed the treacherous opening pathways, we have started to experiment with these stylistic options in more depth. 

The trick is to switch the fit to reflect different parts of the music. Much like one might switch the fit of a pair of trousers from casual to high-waisted to go from day to evening. 

To do this well is by far easier said than done, as there is a risk (as I for sure found out) of looking something akin to the Mad Hatter at his unbirthday party. However, if you are successful, it certainly adds finesse to a freestyle. 

The difficulty also lies in being able to convincingly reflect all moods of a song when some of these lie outside the realms of polite society. The trick to solving this dilemma is always having an @Trixiecantswim to hand, she's like a situation thesaurus.  

The proof of the power of these moves will be in the pudding next week at the Christmas Waacking Battle where in theory we should all be multi-tasking, floor-owning, and style-switching it up like pros ..... cos that's entirely possible. 

Leap Reindeer Leap!

To get an accurate understanding of what @MlleGinger was trying to create in ballet on Thursday night, one must use the imagination to transport oneself so as not to see a dance studio situated in suburban Richmond but an open plane in the North Pole filled with leaping Reindeer and Tinselled-Tutu wearing sugar plum fairies.  In this place of Christmas tranquility the only noises are delicate tinkling laughs, as light as the whipped-cream topping hot chocolate on a cold christmas morn, and the soft sounds of snowflakes landing on an already snow-covered ground. 

Isn't it a beautiful picture? 

Shame we smashed it really. 

From start to finish we were in a particularly giddy mood on Thursday. It may have been the Christmas soundtrack giving us all an extra bounce to our balancé who knows! But what really tipped us over the edge was attempting to jeté across the room whilst adding in a little bit of extra 'spice' in the form of reindeer 'antler' arm movements. 

The problem is that Reindeers are very graceful when they leap - (they have to be, if they were all jerky all the presents would fall out of Santa's sleigh!) - and we're, well, not. 

Suffice to say the left side left us all in a collapsed heap on the floor. So whilst Beyonce may say to the left, to the left, I'm, for once, going to have to contradict her and say stick to the right, to the right. It's for health and safety purposes. 

Celebrations!

And so the christmas party season begins! 

Monday night was our Christmas party. For once we all donned our glad rags rather than our sweaty socks and headed to vodka revolution to party the night away to tunes provided by DJ Dbo. Keeping our eclectic music tastes satisfied is certainly no mean feat, especially when someone is requesting something every five minutes, so the man probably deserves a medal for A)not despairing at the number of times the spice girls were asked for and B) for providing at least one track for everyone to bounce to! 

It was great to see everyone dressed up with numerous outfits getting the @MlleGinger seal of approval. 

 And it was the perfect opportunity to test out some of the moves that we've spent the last year *ahem* perfecting - a particular highlight being Cameo's Candy bringing everyone to the dance floor - funkiest looking line dance I've ever seen that's for sure! It might have been cold outside but it was definitely hot on the dance floor. 

So Cheers everybody! It's been a fantastic year and, although it's not over yet, here's to an even better 2013!

He's behind you ...

This is a sentence often screamed loudly by hundreds of children in theatres across the country throughout December, whilst they laugh at the hero/heroine's inability to notice the baddy creeping up behind them. However, it can have far scarier implications as we found out on our theatre trip to the gala evening of the Bodyguard Musical last night. 

All being fans of: (1)the theatre; (2) scaring the public by going out en masse; and (3) dressing up,  it was always going to be an evening that couldn't fail to disappoint - and so it was with great excitement that we met at Richmond Station ... all looking a lot more glam than we normally do .... and headed up to the Adelphi Theatre in a fashion that was incredibly reminiscent of school trips (especially as we had several actual teachers in tow). 

Having made it to the theatre all together - no mean feat (obviously I've never ever been left behind on the platform watching forlornly at those sliding tube doors due to my inability to push) - we rushed to our seats and ignored the collective groan around us as almost four rows of the stalls were filled with giddy, photo-taking-obsessed, Whitney lovers. Then the show started and all went quiet. 

Though the singing and soundtrack were outstanding from the start, the pulse-accelerating plot line didn't kick off until the second half - but when it did, oh man talk about TENSE. Obviously I will not reveal the exact goings on but suffice to say there was A LOT of gasping, squealing and hand-squeezing going on (@trixiecantswim not being a main perpetrator at all) all leading to the emotional peak of 'I will always love you.' 

Not being in vogue to leave a west-end theatre audience feeling teary and on-edge at the end of a performance, especially with a show honouring Whitney's musical offerings, the encore came in the form of a high energy rendition of 'I wanna dance with somebody.' This was a great excuse for the dancers of the show to come into their own (including @PlagueDanceCrew's Dharmesh Patel), busting out some of their best moves to that banging beat. But more importantly it was a brilliant excuse for all of us to get up and boogie in the seats, in the aisle and all the way home on the train - with our flash-mob-style performance only being curtailed by lack of space on the locomotives provided by tfl. Needless to say the energy was high and all sorts of hilarity ensued - much to the other passengers delight - particularly noteworthy being LOUD renditions of 'I will always love you' to various members of our company across the escalators at Waterloo. 

Overall a great night was had by all, and it was a fantabulous way to kick-off the party season. Just make sure to lock your doors and check under your bed after you read this ... turns out your mum was wrong, monsters do exist!