I‘M BAAAAAACCCKKK with the third instalment of my journey through the training process of the House of Trixie Blue’s Hen Party Training Academy. If you have read either of my previous two blogs (GEEEE Thanks) you will remember I have taken you through my ‘first day at school’ and then there was ‘handing in my homework” which, if you haven’t read any of them you will be thinking WOW they sound dull! however I can assure you they are not.. or at least I hope they aren’t, but it does allow me to share with you all, a little piece of the magic that I am experiencing on this journey.
This time I am focussing on my first teaching session and this took place with the fabulous Kristi and her equally fabulous burlesque troupe – The Sapphire Whiskers at the gorgeous Prohibition Cabaret Bar in Newcastle, which by the way if you have never been, why not? It’s such a lovely quaint bar and actually Kristi produces a lot of Burlesque shows at Prohibition, along with workshops and photoshoots AND the Gin is pretty damn fabulous too… make mine a double!
This next session was a follow up to my studio session with Kristi and Pam back in February so I had some time to polish what I had already created and to develop this choreography further, In fact I got so carried away…. I flipping finished it!! However, now it was time for me to ramp it up a gear and put together my own mini hen party for the lovely whiskers. In order for me to get my brain into the game and organise the chaos that is my creative flare (and lack of patience), I started by creating my own little lesson plan because I only had 30 mins to teach my session which included a warm up (that I needed to create) the section of choreography I wanted to teach plus a cool down.
Time is of the essence whenever your are delivering/ facilitating any session so prior to the party I made sure that everything was hooked up and ready to go; my phone was charged for the music, my speakers were charged and connected via bluetooth and my trusty choreo notes were on hand should I have a total mind fuzz and I needed them and of course my watch to keep myself on track for my hens. To begin the session I wanted to continue with the Beyoncetheme and we completed our warm up to “Crazy in Love” for this I took inspiration from the original music video and incorporated basic exercise principles which I’m sure you will have seen in countless Mr Motivator routines (I swear i’m trying to single handedly reignite this man’s career haha) but safety first and I didn’t want to injure the lovely ladies, so we had a good old boogie and warmed right the way from our wrists all the way through our bodies right down to out teeny tiny toes. Hurray now we were warmed up and ready to get bootylicious (I know wrong song, but shhh it works – just let it happen! haha)
Next up was the main body of the party – verse two of Single Ladies! I was incredibly excited about this part as I had created some choreography that had the group split up and working in a cannon sequence, so I wanted to see how this looked in “real life” rather than me performing from multiple perspectives and filming it to see how the timings worked. I was keen to get the most out of my session and although I had seen these ladies perform many times before; both as a group and solo artists – I didn’t want to assume that they would pick this up no problem or in fact go the opposite end of the scale and that they may struggle as it was a short session as everyone picks things up in a different way! Which is AH-Okay as the world would be a very boring place if we were all the same .. (or didn’t like dance) hehehe. I started the session the same way I did with Kristi and Pam and let them hear the section of the song we would be using for our choreo, set the pace for counting out “counts of 8” and placed everyone in their starting positions.
I first of all demonstrated what I would like them to copy, then broke this down into a counts of 8 with instructions, then I mirrored them (remember all the mirroring I mentioned in the last two blogs…. Yep! this is where it comes in bloody useful!) giving verbal direction as well as visual reference. We did this 2/3 times before adding on the next section and would walk the routine through so the ladies could place the choreography then once we were all happy we knew what we were doing, I began throwing in some variations on how we could really ham up the performance and be like Shirley Ballas, or for those who had been performing at multiple shows and had creaky knees we could take this down a level so there wasn’t as much strain being enforced on their muscles and joints. Then there was music! Once the ladies were happy with placement of the choreo and the level they were best suited we hit play and we took it from the top, placed the movement to the music and rehearsed 2/3 times before moving on. The time flew over during the next 20 mins and It was time to move on to the cool down, again this was a really simple cool down and nothing to strenuous I used this time to continue chatting the lovely ladies about how they found the session and if they wanted to review any of the moves covered.It was a nice way to end the session and find out what they had planned for the rest of the evening etc and that was it, we were done.
Of course as usual I was extremely nervous about my mini hen party as the last time I had taught a group of people was in my audition months earlier, and even then it wasn’t all of the lovely Sapphire Whiskers! As with most things in life we all hate to make ourselves to look “a bit of a tit” and I have performed in many shows alongside these ladies and I very much respected them, so of course I did my usual ‘Niamh Trick” by putting far too much pressure on myself and made myself sick with nerves (to be fair perhaps that was the morning sickness, I was also growing a small human at this point!!!) however on the night I was able to keep my eyes on the prize and concentrate on the job in hand! I had a truly excellent time gate creating their rehearsal time and again I felt very pleased with my accomplishments.
So that’s a wrap the only thing left to do was to wait for my favourite part, the written feedback from Kristi and always this was super supportive, super encouraging and pleasantly constructive. I have had such a great time being a part of the House of Trixie Blue’s Hen Party Training Academy during 2018 because not only have I been apart of these focus sessions to teach dance and developing myself in this way BUT I have also been hosting parties during the sizzling hot summer of 2018 for a multitude of styles AND because I loved it so much I have signed by contracts for 2019!!!! YEEEEEHHHHHHAAAAAA I’m sure I shall continue to record my journey throughout my develpoment so this isn’t farewell as such but just a Ciao for now and remember “There ain’t no party like a HoTB Party” xxxxx
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Thank you so much Niamh. Such a pleasure to have you a part of House of Trixie Blue’s Hen Party Training Academy.
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Love & Shimmies
House of Trixie Blue
xxx
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An Extraordinary Journey of a Trainee Hen Party Instructor Part 2