Burlesque Body Sculpt

THE CLASS: It started off with some intense stretching to music (Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake the night I went). Instructor Jana Edele, who’s also artistic director of the Velvet Kittens burlesque dance troupe, made stretching look elegant and effortless — me, not so much. Several minutes of crunches, with killer bicycle-crunch and push-up combos at the end, were followed by leg-toning exercises. Then came the fun part, learning some sassy dance moves.
THE FUN FACTOR: You get to shake and shimmy in a non-judgmental environment — everyone’s working way too hard to think much about how other people are doing. Edele asked us each to pair up with a classmate, our “shimmy sister,” whom we danced toward in one part of the number “Land of 1,000 Dances.” The collaboration lightened the mood and built camaraderie.
WHO CAN DO THIS: Edele adapts the difficulty of the class to the overall fitness level of the crowd (you should probably take it easy at first on the stretching if you
haven’t been doing something like dancing or yoga, or you’ll be sore).
MY TAKE: I’m such a bad dancer that the choreographer for my high school musical always hid me in the back row. But I enjoy trying to dance, so it was fun to learn some simple combinations. I was surprised by how much I liked the class. That’s in spite of the fact that after I demonstrated what I had learned in class to my husband, he compared my method of running onstage at the beginning of the number to “Forrest Gump, but sexier.”
GOOD TO KNOW: Everyone dances barefoot, and you should wear workout attire, similar to what you’d don for dance or yoga class. I’d recommend bringing some water, because you will work up a sweat
-- Ann Pinson