New Instructor, New Moves

Class on Saturday was really different. It was taught by a woman named Leslie, who used the same warm up that I was used too, but introduced new moves. Moves I have never seen before!

Leslie begun with a "shimmy." Usually, when learning the shimmy we pretty much just kept our knees soft, with a slight bend and our feet about shoulder width apart and just shimmied by moving our hips and core side to side and using our legs.

This time around it was, "Keep your feet a little bit closer than shoulder width distance and shimmy by moving your diaphram in an up/down and side to side motion. It was very different than what I had learned before and difficult. I loved the challenge.

My best friend from home, Vanessa was visiting me this past weekend and attended this class with me. Vanessa's mom is from El Salvador and she has the genetics of being able to move her hips in ridiculous ways. She caught on right away, and eventually I think I improved and at least got the hang of it for a few seconds.

After we spent about 15 minutes shimming, we began practicing drop kicks, a move that was not anything new, but it was the first time I heard it called that. Next, was interesting, because we practiced walking around dancing, as opposed to just staying stationary in one place turning and dancing.

We took long strides, then stepped together and popped our hips out. It looked great when we all did it together and it was a lot of fun.

I am going to go back tonight (Monday) and hopefully learn some fun new moves!