Lef'... Right... Lef' Right Lef'...

"I'm shitting myself."
"Me too. It's good though, to do something that scares the shit out of you every so often."
"Yeah, that's true."
"It'll be fine."
"....I'm shitting myself."
"Yeah. Me too."

11.30am on Saturday, and my friend Katherine and I are sat in Cafe Nero, nervously sipping a cup of tea each. We've made the mistake of meeting up an hour before our first hip hop dance class at Pineapple Studios, something that we've both been dying to do for a really long time, but only just had the guts.

Here's just a small example of my thought process at that moment in time.....

"What the hell am I doing?
It was all well and good planning to go to a class, but now I actually have to do it...
But this is something I've been wanting to do for such a long time, and it is only a beginner class.
I can't bloody learn choreography. Cheryl Cole's music video is one thing, a class with a trained dancer......
It could be really fun, though. I do love dancing.
But the last time I went to a dance class it was full of prissy schoolgirls and their cliques....
It's not gonna be like that here though, it's just a class, I'm not enrolling for anything.
What the hell......."

I imagine Katherine's mind was running through similar things.

So we spent that hour psyching ourselves up for the class, then scaring the shit out of each other, then back to the pep talks, then back to the doubt. It probably wasn't the best idea. But anyway, at 11.45 we left Cafe Nero and somehow dragged ourselves around the corner to Pineapple.

I've gotta say it....... It wasn't half as bad as I expected. Our teacher was an awesome Spanish dude called Xavi Monreal (YouTube him!), who was focused and a great teacher, and also pretty funny. There were probably about 30 people in the class, ranging from fairly good dancers right down to absolute beginners, and everyone was so focused on learning the choreo that you didn't have to worry about what you looked like. It was just really fun. Initially I was concentrating so hard on the steps that I forgot I was there to dance and not some sort of lighthearted military drill. Once I relaxed a bit I started to run through the steps in my own usual style, and it actually started to look alright!

So... all in all, a good experience. Most importantly it was a good laugh. Especially towards the end when we had to just dance around the room with each other doing the "UFO". Katherine was right, you do need to do something that scares the shit out of you every so often, it's good for you. And with every new thing that you do it probably doesn't get any less scary. But what would be the point in that?

And before you ask, no... I did not see Louie Spence!