Try Something New: Take an advanced dance class when you're only a beginner!

Today I took two advanced/professional level dance classes from two extremely talented and fairly famous-in-the-dance-world dancers: Matt Cady and Megan Lawson from the popular dance crew Fanny Pak! (Check out the following links to see some of their work: Video 1 | Video 2 | Video 3) Now this particular dance intensive grouped dancers by age; therefore anyone under 15 years was put in the intermediate class while anyone older than that are classified as advanced/professional level. So even if you're a dancing newbie, if you're above that age group, you're going to be taking an advanced level class. Now, putting aside the fact that I was completely intimidated by the thought of taking class from these two simply because they are as good as they are, and they are as famous as they are, I AM SAID DANCING NEWBIE!

So... I was terrified basically.

I had heard about the class opportunity literally two days before and I mean, I was totally stoked and excited that these great dancers with incredible talent were going to be making a teaching stop in my city of all places! And I knew that I wanted to try it, but I was absolutely terrified at the thought of making a fool of myself in front of these great dancers!

I literally only started dancing this past year.

And even then, I only took a handful of classes and not very consistently on account of some wonky scheduling. I think that I can pick up choreography fairly well and fairly quickly, though I think I have no groove and fantastic performance quality really (though I think my groove has gotten a lot better in the past year!) Plus I didn't practice anything I learned outside of class, which probably isn't the best thing to do if you want to get better at dancing. So in the very truest way, I was / am and do consider myself a beginner in the dancing world.)

And that is why I'm so proud of the new thing that I tried today. Diving headfirst into two advanced dance classes and managing to get the choreography down and keep up with the rest of the class (I did a lot better in one of the classes than the other, but I didn't fail or give up in either so for that I'm especially proud!) I mean I won't lie, I obviously wasn't a star or anything. For one class there was a loooot of technical jazz movements all done one after another that I got pretty jumbled up on and probably my technique was horrendous and I ended up faking the movements for the most part. For the other class, while I had gotten all of the choreography down during the teaching and no-music run-through, with the music actually on, the pace seemed to double and it made everything a lot harder but as I said. I think I accomplished quite a bit and when it boils down to the fact that I was a beginner trying to keep up in advanced classes, and I did, for the most part, keep up in the advanced classes, then that's something that I'm super proud of myself for doing!

To be completely honest, I have taken one other advanced level class from an also incredibly talented and famous dancer (Mark Kanemura, SYTYCD. Love him. ♥) before today. But I think this still qualifies as trying something new (new dancers, new combinations!), something I was definitely afraid of trying, but something that after doing, I couldn't be more happy with the day and the experience.

The first 23 seconds of the video below is what I learned in one of the classes today. I loved it. I had so much fun!

Oh right, I guess the most important thing that came out of today's new thing that I tried is that:

I had fun! :)


(Side note: Lisa, I'm not sure how long or short these entries are supposed to be?)
- Linda ♥