Street 'n' Hip-hop

I'm not a particularly graceful person. I took ballet classes briefly as a small child, until I realised my parents were cruelly calling my butterfly dance "the elephant dance" behind my back.

This time last year I finished a course in African Dancing and, encouraged by my apparent talent for stomping around wailing with my bum sticking out, decided to join another class called "Street 'n' Hip-hop". That's cool, I thought, I'm cool. I listen to hip-hop, y'know, Jurassic 5 and all that. This sounded like just my kind of thing.

"Street 'n' Hip-hop" turned out to be me, six 15 year olds, and an (even younger?) teacher showing us how to spasm about on the floor to a song that seemed to go, "Get down motherfucker, yo yo mo' fucker get down, get down on the flo', else I blo' yo' mo' fo' brains out... mo' fo'". Or words to that effect anyhow — I can't remember exactly how it went.

Now, if it had just been spasming about on the floor to that kind of... filth, then I probably would've managed it. It's just that we had to kind of jump up again after each spasm, spin around in a circle, then grind our hips provocatively towards the mirror before finishing with a scowl.

As you can imagine, I had some trouble taking all this in at once. The other girls, however, seemed to get it right straight off; all pursed lips, bare midriffs, and yo' mo' fo' attitude.

"How many classes have I missed?!" I wailed at the teacher as I struggled to pull myself up into the "grinding" position.

"None," she scowled at me from the scowling position. "This is the first lesson".

Oh dear. I was twenty-five years old and, as I had been warned on the booking line, this was "quite a young class".

"No worries," I'd said, as I paid the £140 fee. "I'm cool, y'know, I listen to hip-hop, Jurassic 5 and all that."

I never went back.