Dancebase: Bust Dem Moves

Yo yo yo, listen up. My girl Mi Mi is in the house and she be teaching us some moves, dawg. Ahem. Fortunately, Turn Up & Hip-Hop Beginners – one of the many drop-in classes available at Dance Base in Edinburgh – doesn’t actually require you to be in any way cool in order to attend, which is a bit of a relief for yours truly. It does require you to put your inhibitions aside and give it some welly though, so it’s a good thing that teacher Mi Mi Mackenzie is adept at dispelling that awkward feeling one has when the realisation dawns that you’re about to get hot and sweaty in front of a bunch of strangers. We skip the chat and get stuck straight in. The best bit is that before you know it, you’re doing a pretty thorough workout…and its fun. Even the warm-up exercises require a bit of ‘tude, the hour slips by fast, and before you know it, you’re on the floor with your bum in the air and your left leg knotted round your right ankle. I think. The drop-ins are designed for two reasons: to give you a taste of a particular style, so you can ascertain whether you actually enjoy doing the cramp roll (tap), the grapevine (line dancing) or the cross basic (salsa) before signing up for a full term; or for those who baulk at committing to regular classes, and prefer the freedom of dropping in as and when. There are benefits to both, but if you’re dithering, the drop-ins are well worth a shot. They’re fairly cheap, on at a variety of times, a good workout, and judging by the looks on the faces of the attendees I saw come and go, a good laugh too. Word.