My adventure (so far) into the world of Burlesque

You may have seen a few posts down that I spent my holiday reading Jo Weldon's Burlesque Handbook in preparation for my Cheek Of It Burlesque School 'Showtime' course. So, for the last 2 Tuesday evenings, I have been introducing myself to the art of the tease. Week 1 was spent learning the basics; your standard, bump, grind, shimmy and the rest, along with a short routine as a group. I was loving every second of it, and at the risk of sounding big headed, I have a good shimmy. I felt confident, I felt sexy, and at this stage, I still had all my clothes on.

So, for homework we were given the task of making up a short routine using the moves we had learnt that week. 'Great! I can totally do this!' I thought. I spent every spare minute I could (which at the moment, turns out is quite a lot) picking songs and trying out moves. To cut a very long story slightly shorter, I eventually had a minute-long routine choreographed to Smokey Joe's Cafe by The Robins aka The Coasters. Listen here if you fancy it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1QELlwrvc8

The time comes in class number 2 where I am given to chance to showcase my work, my burlesque debut in front of 8 or so fellow beginners. I was to be magical, an epiphany, the moment where I ask myself 'where have I been doing with my life until now?'....

 I'm pretty sure I blacked out. My legs stopped working, my attempt at a strut looked more like Bambi than Jessica Rabbit, my eyes stopped working and all I could see was darkness, I was shaking like a leaf and my seductively cheeky facial expressions went right out the window. 

Despite the inevitable forgetting of some moves, I just about made it through the routine. Needless to say I was disappointed with my performance. But I think I'm lucky to have come out of it in one piece. I blame the clothes. Burlesque is all about striptease, right? Clearly it was my body's reaction of telling me something wasn't up. Maybe if I'd been in just my knickers it would have been a masterpiece of performance.

What?....You never know....