learning new moves

About a month ago, my favorite zumba teacher, Vanessa, offered to stay after class to help students learn dance steps.  It's taken me this long to finally ask for her help.

Part of the delay was caused by trying to decide which move to begin with.  So many things I don't know how to do.  I've thought about it all month, and finally decided to ask her how she does that thing where you start with your head and then gradually move every part of your body forward and then back.  Like a snake or a mermaid.  Or maybe a dolphin, but definitely not a whale.

Amazingly, she knew what I was talking about.  A body roll.

There was some discussion about whether I should start by learning a side roll or a front roll, so we tried doing both and eventually settled on the front roll, in slow-slow-slow motion.

Btw, it ends with a butt pop.  (Or that's what I'm calling it and I'm going to need to spend a bit of time on just that particular part before I'm doing it in class.)

After a couple of tries, she said she thought it would be good to record a couple of different common steps and post them on the internet so I (and others) could practice at home.

Hm.  This is starting to sound like I'm very bad at this zumba thing and she was feeling sorry for me...but well, it didn't feel like that when it was going on, so I'm cutting myself some slack and am going to just go with the thought that there are lots of us who need a bit of help.

Or at least, I was going with that until I came home and tried to show Jr how that body roll thing works and when I got to my ankles, just before the butt pop part, there was this outrageous popping-cracking sound coming from my ankles and Jr just couldn't stop laughing.

Pfft.