Not-So-Beginner Blog: Practicing Mojitos

January 30, 2009 03:00 PM

We have a class of tricksters, and last night a few of us tried to fool Allyson by switching name tags. Allyson is too quick for us and noticed early in the class that several people were wearing the wrong names. During our bust-shimmy walks around the room, we switched back to our proper name tags.

Before class, Sarah, a BI/BII performer, was practicing her choreography, and was pulling out moves I’d never seen before. Whatever she was doing looked good, and she was mumbling about M and N. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was a tiny bit jealous that we were in the same technique class and she was learning more moves than I was.

In class, we reviewed the bust shimmy, arm undulations (which Jackie and I have perfected, as long as Jackie stands behind me and undulates her right arm while I undulate my left) and basic hip drops, before moving on to new material. The m and n hip drops! So that’s what Sarah had been practicing! Suddenly, the basic hip drop didn’t seem so difficult anymore.

In my time as studio manager, I’ve had the opportunity to watch many classes and performances, and this is a move I’ve seen often and tried to figure out. I’d never seen it broken down, but always part of a longer combination. Broken down, it isn’t that difficult to understand or to do. It just looks like it is. To illustrate how still the upper body should be while the hips swivel and drop, Allyson had us imagine we were at a bar, ordering mojitos. The bartender shouldn’t know that we were doing hip drops under the bar (unless we wanted free drinks, someone called out). Rachel pointed out that m-drops were for mojitos, so now I think of m-drops as mojito drops. They are my favorite new move so far. Allyson added a few to our hafla choreography, so I’d better work on making them look complicated, but effortless. Like a mojito.

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