I got to combine two Buckt activities together today. Trampolining at Zap Space and a beginners Salsa Class at the Lynch International School of Dance.
Now, I believe in Fun over Frills any day of the week, and for that reason I wasn't entirely disheartened when I walked into Zap Space to find it bore little more than a passing resemblance to the neon lit, high energy multi-floor soft-play arena of bouncing super-fun that Google images had hinted at. It did nonetheless fall short of those images. Additionally, few of the lockers actually locked, the toilets were 'yeesh' and the seating area consisted of a number of flimsey wooden bench-tables on a dimley lit,sticky-floored platform that resembled both in image and vibe a club dance floor at the end of the night.
However, that first precarious giggle-inducing bounce off a trampolining captured the real essence of the venue. The first section is a simple grid of equally sized, equally space trampolines for the beginners to cut their teeth on. It felt more peculiar than I remembered or imagined it would feel, being projected up into the air by that elasticated weave. For the first few minutes it was all I could risk simply to jump, and not even as daringly high as my companion, and that was all it took to get me sweating. I used the excuse of a break to pootle up to the next level which turned out to be something of a "Gladiator-esque" soft play baton battle over a pool of soft foam squares. I took on my activity buddy James and lost. I then took him on again with the berserker fury of a woman who would not be made to look a fool in front of 3 almost entirely disinterested 7 year olds (one of whom was more focused on gnawing at one of the foam squares, such are the catering facilities at ZapSpace) who had nothing to do with us.... and lost again. So I gathered together what remained of my diginity and took it to the corner of the room where there was a single small cirulate trampoline set in the floor in front of a panel of randomly lit buttons and a score board. To start the game I had to hit the red panel near the top of the grid, which required me to bounce as high as I could on the aforementioned trampoline and thus started the game inwhich I was to slap my hand against each of the panels as they lit up. I scored 28 by the time was up. I was pretty happy with it. Not because it was a particularly high score, but because it was A score. (A great deal of my contentment in life comes from setting a low bar of success for myself. I am almost never disappointed, whilst almost always being a disappointment. Meh! *Shrugs*)
There was also a half pipe trampoline in that section which I had absolutely bugger all idea what to do with. So I moved on up to the next level. And found a slide!! Back up a level. Slide again!! Back up a level... My friend James stopped me pre-slide on the third attempt and pointed me upstairs before I could make a fool of either of us for a third time (I dont think it was the slide he minded so much as the obligatory room-filling "Wheeeeeeeeee" that accompanied it each time... But in my defence it was really steep and if I dont laugh I scream. I did it for dignity. And fun. Mostly fun)
The top level and we found "Trampoline Dodgeball" It was kind of fun, but us 3 were the only adults there, and it felt kind of dickish to throw the balls at teeny tiny little children, so mostly we bounced whilst playing catch for a bit, and threw balls (gently) back when they bounced our way.
Back down again (Slide!!!) then back up again to the softplay baton area where I finally beat James and celebrated my utterly meaningless victory by waving my baton over my head as though it were a FIFA trophy to the amusement of the Floor Assistant and the bemusement of literally everyone else.
Back down again (Sliiiiiiide!!) and we spent the remainder of the hour simply working on 'our moves' on the lower level trampolines. By this time I grew confident enough to project myself up as high as my daring companion and even attempted to travel from one trampoline to another, but alas, despite a couple of passable attempts I mostly kept landing somewhat uncomfortably and entirely without grace on the harder foam platforms that connected them.
By the end of an hour I was sweaty but happy. Three of us attended and all three of us 30-somethings left broken in some respect or another. J's Back was Busted, L's Calf was a Casuality and my Thigh was Fu... *ahem* 'Fundamentally less than in perfect condition'.
But It - Was - Fun!
We filled up with Mexican food a short walk down the road before bidding our Adieu's and me moving on to my next activity for the day, an Introductory class to Salsa.
The Lynch International School of Dance in Stratford is actually based in the Atherton Leisure Centre. I followed a crowd of very friendly people into a room which actually turned out to be a 30 minute taster session of Rumba dancing. It was a simple ballroom square dance which I was able to mostly pick up by the end of the session on account of both its delightful simplicity and the repetive, patient and charasmatic guidance of the dance tutor David (lovely man!) He had to show us all how to do the simplist moves repeatedly before we all got it (mostly) passably right, but his patience didn't drop for an instant.
As is to be somewhat expected, the women outnumbered the men in this class by something outrageous like 30 to 5. So we adopted a system of the women queing in front of each man and the first one in line actually dancing with the man at the head of her respective queue until the end of the song, before going back to the end of the line and being replaced by the next woman behind her.
Me, I was just fine dancing by myself. I felt I had it until there was another set of feet to trip over. So I practiced until I got near to the head of the 'Line of Mortal Humiliation' then politely extracted myself from the class.
Worse caught by the stealthy assistant Yvone (Lovely lady!) who lured me back to the beginners salsa class in a different room. She showed me a few basic salsa steps in the remaining hour and a half. The Mambo, the backward combo, the side step, the cross step, The Open and The Bow Tie. On a brief intermission while she left the room I also quietly attempted to mirror the sensual hand-work being performed by the 'big kids class' at the other side of the room, but while they perfectly inferrred sensual caresses with their delicate hand movements, I myself looked like I was smothering myself with invisible jam. In fact Yvonne returned just in time to see me having given up on sensuality and simply resorting to licking the invisible jam off myself. (Yeugh, gooseberry!) She clearly had questions, but was too polite to ask.
Both classes were amazing. And though I went for the Salsa class, I was actually most proud to have come away with a (admittedly basic) ballroom dance. That's another useless talent for my "be prepared for anything" personal-skills bat-belt.
Probably will not return for regular classes pretty much entirely because of how far out of my area they are. But I would heartily recommend either of them to anyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment