And so it’s over.

I’ve had an amazing month. Here’s the tally:

We’re getting close to the end, and it’s starting to show. Some people have long surpassed the 28/28 goal, and now have shiny star stickers in boxes on the leaderboard, stretching all the way up to 40 classes or [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

SImulation. Do not try this at home.

We’re getting close to the end, and it’s starting to show. Some people have long surpassed the 28/28 goal, and now have shiny star stickers in boxes on the leaderboard, stretching all the way up to 40 classes or more!

This has come at a price, with the most dedicated contenders practically moving into the studio. We take our meals at SweatShop. We leave changes of clothes at SweatShop. We nap at SweatShop between classes. We go out for greasy food together after class, and have conversations that make no sense, often involving such musings as

“What if we could use ONION RINGS instead of HULA HOOPS?”

On the plus side, this has created a real sense of community. Those of us who are participating in SweatFest have bonded into a kind of cohort, moving through the month as a milling blob of increasingly disheveled people whose ever more bulging quadriceps fit less and less comfortably into the legs of our collective pants.

On the down side, our loved ones have started to miss us. To quote Simon,

“SweatFest is the worst thing ever; I hate it.

We’ve created a support group on Facebook to help with the separation anxiety, but we know, deep down, that as SweatFest draws to a close, it will be us, the SweatFesters who most need support. Only 8 SweatFest classes remain, and after that, it will be over. WHAT WILL WE DO? WHERE WILL WE GO?

To that I say, Dance, SweatFesters, Dance. Ask not what tomorrow will hold.

I was going to write about another theme entirely, but then something miraculous happened:

Way back in February 2004 (I think. I know it was before this blog post, and it was winter.) I broke my toe [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

I was going to write about another theme entirely, but then something miraculous happened:

Way back in February 2004 (I think. I know it was before this blog post, and it was winter.) I broke my toe while practicing a sequence of moves which, honestly, is in no way dangerous, and shouldn’t involve breaking anything.

But I have a talent for that kind of injury. I could hardly walk for almost 8 weeks after the accident, and the experience left me with a severe mental block that prevented me even attempting the moves in sequence again.

Here’s MaeHem, at Street Dance Academy in Toronto, doing the beloved move– a simple pop from a crab freeze to a chair freeze- in which I managed, however incongruously, to hurt myself:

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do it again.

But I was wrong!

Yesterday, in JoDee’s b-boy/girl-ing class, we ended the class with chair freezes. And for some reason (Perhaps because it was my 25th class of the month? Hmm?) I forgot to be afraid.

I did the freeze by itself, no problem. Then I started to get bored, and tried it on my awkward side– and it worked again. Then I added some six-step before the freeze, and and without even thinking about it, popped right into it, like it was no big deal. Since the hard part was over, I rolled over to do it on the other side, then tracked around, to finish with a headstand– an actually-kind-of-impressive cool-looking sequence of events!

It was sloppy; it was messy; it was slow.

But it was a miracle. To suddenly get the move– and my interest in b-girling– back, almost six years to the day from when I hurt myself was more than I could have asked for and way more than I ever expected.

And really awesome prizes, too, in honour of SWEATFEST! Read on…

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. Come to Babar en Ville, and you could win FIVE dance classes at STUDIO SWEATSHOP (just five. no one’s going [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

And really awesome prizes, too, in honour of SWEATFEST! Read on…

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. Come to Babar en Ville, and you could win FIVE dance classes at STUDIO SWEATSHOP (just five. no one’s going to make you dance 28 times in a row or anything ;-P) , and a pair of REEBOK CLASSIC shoes to wear to class!

This one is going to be short, but life-changingly poingant, I promise.

I learned the same thing in two different classes last week.

In Hula-Hooping, it sounded like this:

“If you feel like you’re about to drop the hoop, [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

This one is going to be short, but life-changingly poingant, I promise.

I learned the same thing in two different classes last week.

In Hula-Hooping, it sounded like this:

“If you feel like you’re about to drop the hoop, spin; The hoop will go faster and stay up, and buy you time to figure out what to do with it.”

In House, it was:

“If you get stuck in a step and don’t know how to transition out of it, jump; when you land, you can start fresh with any step you want.”

This is decent advice, not just for dancing, but for all kinds of things, like writing or life in general. If what you’re doing isn’t quite working, don’t let it drag you down; try something new– spontaneous, big, disrupting– to give yourself a better shot or a new perspective.

You’ve been grinding away at that chapter all day, and it’s still not flowing? Skip ahead to another part of the novel that you feel more excited about. Take a walk. Have a shower, or a sandwich. Anything you need to disrupt that thing that’s not working, so you don’t get mired in its unworkingness. When you’re ready to come back to it, you’ll do so with revived energy, and the knowledge that you got something done, even if it wasn’t exactly what you sat down to tackle first.

It’s not cheating, it’s clever.

We have a leaderboard now. And we love our leaderboard. Every day before class, it is the subject of as much scrutiny as if it were a casting announcement. And in a way, it is a casting announcement– we are [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

We have a leaderboard now. And we love our leaderboard. Every day before class, it is the subject of as much scrutiny as if it were a casting announcement. And in a way, it is a casting announcement– we are looking to appoint someone as the most hardcore. We all want to believe we are already deserving of that role.

Although I have officially passed the half-way mark four days ahead of schedule, I am by no means the most active SweatFest participant. This one guy, Peter, had 15 classes already yesterday, when most of us were at about 11. Josee & Yannick were hot on his heels.

The leaderboard is definitely messing with our heads. Forget the 28 classes in 28 days goal. Now people are just striving to do the most classes, period. I even caught myself telling someone yesterday “I’m kind of slacking this week. I’m only going to do seven classes, and none of them will be breakdance.”

I’m only going to do seven (7) classes.

This is obviously not healthy thinking. This is leaderboard thinking. I come by it honestly, and you can see it reflected in my characters A LOT– especially Madi (she’s a big presence in Rhythm and Blues, just as she was in Break on Through).

My mother, who raised me, and who is competitive in every physical activity she tries (in the “competitive athlete” sense, not the “let me win or I’ll club you with this racket” sense) said to me “SweatFest doesn’t sound that challenging. When I was in ballet college, we danced five classes a day, five days a week.”

But I’d like to point out that no one at SweatFest has been to ballet college, and in fact, most people arrive at it after a full day of work or school (or whatever it is I do– sit in cafes, staring into space for hours on end). We should all stop from time to time and smell the sweat, and remember that even the “minimum” is a feat of awesome.

The leaderboard, meanwhile, will get recycled one day.

I had another wardrobe emergency yesterday. I was getting my picture taken by my good old friend, Tristan Brand in Old Montreal– known for tourist traps, cobblestones, overpriced food, lots of cool old stuff, and being nowhere near my apartment– [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

I had another wardrobe emergency yesterday. I was getting my picture taken by my good old friend, Tristan Brand in Old Montreal– known for tourist traps, cobblestones, overpriced food, lots of cool old stuff, and being nowhere near my apartment– when I realized I had forgotten to pack a t-shirt for SweatFest. The horror! (One simply cannot sweat for two hours into one’s favourite blouse– nay, one’s only blouse that needs ironing.)

With no time to go home before class if I also wanted to eat (and trust me, you want eat a LOT when you do 28 dance classes in 28 days, or at least, I do) I had no where to turn but one of the area’s many tourist shops (seriously, there are so many, it’s like if you turn your back to cross the street, they mate, and when you turn around again, there are three new ones on the block, each one more gawky and nickel-plated than the last.)

Among the racks of suncatchers, cuddly stuffed polar-bears, and autum-leaf-stenciled polar-fleece hoodies, I weighed many fine options (brown shirt with slogan: “trust me, I’m a doctor,” royal blue shirt with superman logo bearing fleur de lys à la place du “S”, pink shirt with “Montreal” airbrushed over inexplicable glitter butterflies) and finally settled on this beauty:

Yes, that’s right, Two Wolf Amethyst Moon.

Please. Don’t tell me you’re not jealous.

Before you ask, there was a shirt with FOUR wolves, but it was not purple. So I sacrificed two wolves for grapeiness, and was it ever worth it. I feel more powerful with this shirt on, less tired. With this shirt, I am no mere mortal, no ordinary “recreational dancer.” On Sweatshop’s hallowed floors, with this shirt– these sacred threads– I am nothing less than a shimmering, elegant beast of prey. Choreography is mine. Extension is in my reach. Needless to say, everybody else wants one.

OK, now, if, after that mind-blowing burst of sartorial oomph, you still have it in you to gather your breath and your wits, I urge you to do so, because I’m pretty sure that what I am about to show you is, in fact, the new Best Thing On The Internet.

Can you do it? Are you breathing?

If you can remember back as far as yesterday, when I wrote about how peculiar it was to try to understand hula hooping and krumping in the same week (I mean, in the same lifetime, even, would be a lot to expect, for realz) then your brain will certainly explode when you see them together in one video clip, presented as HULA KRUMPING by one young “Billy Cure a.k.a. ‘B. Boy Rugrat’. Behold:

(you can safely jump to 0:50 to see the real action)

Now there’s a kid who doesn’t even need a wolf shirt to hold it down.

OK, THERE’S the soreness. In the end, I did 10 classes last week (9 that I’m counting). That was too many. I was feeling pretty great up until about 8 or 9 or so, and then in the morning on Saturday, [...]]]> get your sweat on at Studio Sweatshop!

OK, THERE’S the soreness. In the end, I did 10 classes last week (9 that I’m counting). That was too many. I was feeling pretty great up until about 8 or 9 or so, and then in the morning on Saturday, my quads were so tight, I couldn’t bend, which made my final break class kind of ouch. This week I shant try so hard to be a hero.

Luckily all was healed with 3 consecutive baths (hot, freezing, hot) and a single helping of extra-strength ibuprofen, so I’m ready to hit cardio hip hop and yoga again tonight. Yoga is going to feel especially good.

The tally of classes last week was:

• Break x3
• House x3
• Cardio Hip Hop
• Yoga
• Hula Hoop
• Krumpking

Yes, that’s right, I did hula hooping and krumping in the same week, and yes, for the record, it WAS strange.

We all know what hula hooping looks like (skip ahead to about 35 seconds):

And then THIS is krumping (action at 35 seconds again):

Just a decade old, Krumping is a really new dance. It looks kind of erratic but it’s actually extremely controlled. Every movement is delivered with the commitment of a Judo punch. The legs are rooted much like in ballet, and the torso is completely isolated from the legs, but it doesn’t really feel like any other dance I’ve ever done, and even most dance teachers I’ve talked to can’t describe it without getting tongue-tied. You can see evidence of popping in it, here and there, and the occasional tinge of army boot camp. But other than that, it seems to have come from space, fully formed, and entirely unique. The music has roughly the spirit and energy of hip hop crossed with death metal. Oh, and you start and end a session with a primal scream, like you might imagine a football team doing. I had to do my scream twice, because the commitment in my scream was not believable the first time. You’re supposed to tap into the source of that scream at all times while Krumping. I may, in fact, be too silly to achieve this, but I’ll probably go back to the class, screaming barrier notwithstanding, just because it was a good class.