Monday, October 29, 2012

Burlesque 101

So, as I've mentioned in passing a couple of times, I took a six week burlesque class. We learned a cloyingly sweet 50s pinup routine which included glove peels and bra and panty removal as well as a few different types of shimmies.

Shimmies are kind of the bread and butter of burlesque. They're what get all your fun lady parts shaking and jiggling in provocative ways. I need lots of shimmy practice. My motions aren't exaggerated enough and I tend to tense up at some point and that doesn't work. I try to practice at least like 15 minutes every day. I just go through all the shimmies I know and try to do them for a couple of minutes each.

I still need lots of practice on lots of things, actually. And I know for next semester to run through the choreography way more than I did. I never got to that point of feeling so comfortable with the moves that I could inject any personality into it. I sort of felt like a robot doing the motions in the final class when it was my turn to do it on my own. My instructor said I did a great job, but my classmate really pulled out the sass and it was fantastic! I was too busy thinking about what move comes next to do much more than smile. Plus I'm still getting over feeling ridiculous watching myself in the mirror.

So that's that. I was thinking only a couple of weeks into it that I would take another round of 101 after this semester. But all my classmates are doing 201 and I'd really like to stick with them. We've just started getting to know each other and we all get along really well. I had to think about it for half a second after finishing my final run-through of the routine. I decided to commit to this thing and see it through and that I'm going to devote the time necessary to do a better job in 201. Because I know I can. And it's fun and totally worth the effort.

Now to design some costumes...

No comments:

Post a Comment