And We're Dancing...

So I teach my first barre class this Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. I won't normally be available to teach during the day, but it's spring break and no one will be in the office anyway, so I'm taking a couple hours of vacation and heading in late. I'm not nervous about it right now, but I'm 100% certain I will be when I put my yoga mat down in the place of authority at the front of the room. I'm also not sure I can count out loud while doing ab exercises, but maybe that's when I need to get up and check form. I'm the teacher. I know what's best.

I bought a new binder at Target yesterday because all new endeavors begin best with new school supplies. I also bought tabs and sheet protectors and skinny markers- I'm not a ballet dancer, but I'm pretty sure each of those items is essential to mapping out any kind of choreography.

I'm still working on my music play list. Rather than stress myself out trying to find current popular music that is cool but not too cool and therefore uncool, I'm going with a theme- dance movie soundtracks. Because a huge part of my attraction to barre in the beginning was it let me pretend I was a ballerina. Even though I've never had the build, feet, or flexibility to be one, I could live out my beloved dance movies while standing in releve at the barre in my 30's and pretend. So I have the upbeat songs from Center Stage, Step Up, etc., but I need more, so let me know if you have any favorite dance-y songs. Or any fun songs ("Shut Up and Dance" by Walk the Moon is also on the list). It doesn't all have to be on theme.

Center Stage good times

I have my warm-up, arms, barre, abs, and cool down sections all written out; now I just need to go through it once to make sure I'm remotely in the right ballpark on timing. I've been to enough classes that I'm not too worried about having to wing it, whether to cut the number of sets or intervals to shorten it up, or throw in additional moves to fill blank time if needed, but I'm staring at my carefully printed cue list and have no idea if it's a 45 minutes or 2 hours. Maybe I'll get Claire to go through it with me.

We'll cool down to this song because I'm obsessed with it (along with Mark Wilkinson's entire Hand Picked album; have you heard it? It's wonderful.):

So that's what's on my plate for today- music and barre practice. I still need to plan my first day of teaching outfit, but I have time.

Until then, Cora is going to help by highlighting the passages of Brown Bear, Brown Bear she finds most motivating. Perhaps I'll open class with a short reading.

(I have since reclaimed the marker to its high shelf; that girls is like a bloodhound when it comes to contraband writing utensils.)