Fashion

Beauty

Dance boot camp: Week one

In my mind, I’m a dancer: My lithe, lean body leaping, pirouetting and chasséing to and from the office, the grocery store, Sunday brunch…

In reality, I’m a beauty director: Sitting on my ass 24/7 be it on a Euro-bound plane or in front of a computer screen. But I covet the art of dance the same way an eight-year-old girl craves cupcakes covered in sprinkles. To be able to make my body⎯the one that trips when walking in flip flops and routinely bangs into my desk, the wall and occasionally my colleagues at work⎯swivel, twirl and undulate anytime I want and look amazing doing it? I could swallow it whole.

Well aware of my not-so-secret desire (thanks to incessant chatter about So You Think You Can Dance), health editor Rani Sheen suggested I give the Core Rhythms (corerhythms.com) dance DVDs a try. Add a little Latin-influenced bump and grind to my current finger snapping, left-foot-right-foot-slide repertoire, and tighten my tushy and abs simultaneously? She didn’t have to ask me twice.

Day One

6:15 a.m. I had set my alarm clock for with every intention of bounding out of bed and into my workout gear, but instead I hit the snooze button.

7:45 a.m. This time I do bounce out of bed, startling Trixie, my cat, as I throw both her and the sheets off my body and scramble into a makeshift workout outfit that is one part pink bra top, one part purple briefs. I lace up my sneakers, head into the living room, push the coffee table up against the couch and click the DVD’s Get Started button. With only 15 minutes to spare, getting started is all I have time for, so my spandex-clad on-screen instructors Jaana Kunitz and Julia Powers have their work cut out for them.

I can’t decide if I want to watch the instructors from a front angle or a back angle or a split-screen, so my first five minutes are performed holding the remote control in my right hand and flipping. I settle on the front angle and master the 15-minute session of side-to-side, front-to-back hip thrusts and rotations pretty easily. The music is fairly slow and it’s all about repetition, which is good since I haven’t had any coffee yet. I am relieved that Jaana and Julia aren’t super-duper chirpy-perky; their commentary is instruction-focused and easy to follow. Trixie seems to be enjoying the show, flopping two feet away from my stationary stance, offering an infrequent meow of what I imagine to be encouragement…or laughter. Regardless, I’m finished, and don’t have time to attempt the next level. Until tomorrow…

Check back next week for more of Adriana’s adventures in dance.

EARLIER: The best dance classes across Canada