Beetle mania

It's fair to say that the lovely little hall that we use for class has its drawbacks. For a routine like our current one, the nubbly red plastic chairs that we are using are a tad, shall we say, sub optimal.

Our own Burlicious chairs have seats of solid, polished wood. These produce a fantastic slide surface for some of our moves. The red plastic chairs, by contrast, have rather too much grip.

So, a move designed on our own chairs, on which we can glide round from one side to the other with our feet off the ground and our legs in the air, translates into a rather more staccato move on our red plastic numbers. The specially designed non-slip surface of the hall chairs mean that, although I did manage to slide round gamely from left to right. legs up in the air twinkling away, my knickers did not.

It does detract a little from the sexiness of any dance to have to stand up and hoick yer drawers up vigorously partway through. It also makes those of us sticking to our chairs as we travel look a little like upended beetles, legs furiously thrashing up and down as we try to swivel from side to side.

Ah well, beauty through effort, showgirls, beauty through effort.

Yours, tending slightly grated buttocks,

Burlicious x

Not quite like clockwork

Teaching a dance routine while lying flat on one's back and waving one's legs about is not easy.

Learning a dance routine while lying flat on one's back and waving one's legs about is much harder.

The nature of the situation is that the troupe can't see what I am doing so they can't cue in to my moves as they learn, and I can't see what they are doing so I don't know what is working and what... er... isn't.

So we posted the Sparkly Bra Pixie at the front of the class to stand, observe and shout instructions while I rolled around on the floor with the best of them. Her feedback at times is to the point - "shut yer legs!" she shouts as she watches a sea of legs waving like little anemones entirely to their own rhythm.

As I get to my feet after each mini bit of routine, I am treated to the mayhem that is behind me. One showgirl is lying there, slowly mouthing to herself "one... two... " as if she is in her first "learn my numbers" class at school. Another is legs akimbo in a new move that she has christened "the full midwife". Another can't work out why, when she pops her gloved hands between her closed thighs, she can't draw off her glove by clenching it with her thighs alone. Turns out she is one of those superhuman creatures who has a thigh gap. Another is doing the knicker flicking off move (don't worry - no drawers are removed in this routine. This is a clever glove thing instead) upside down, as if she were flicking them on and not off.

It's an hour of mirth; femaleness; car crash, smart wit, sisterhood; and smut and daftness. It sets me up a treat for the rest of the week, it really does.

Yours, working the full midwife into the next routine,

Burlicious x