I don’t care if I’m late to the party; I’m just glad that I’ve actually found the party and am enjoying it! Me, the cantankerously particular critic who finds something to nitpick in practically every workout. I’ve posted long explanations of what bugs me about beloved instructors like Cathe and Kimberly, why I can’t stand Tae Bo, and exactly how I think Greg ought to film his workouts, but now I feel like shouting out, “Mikey likes it!” (Apologies to anyone who doesn’t remember the old Life cereal commercials.)

These are the dance workouts I’d been wanting for so long. To anyone else out there wondering where all the jazz dance workouts are: Yoo-hoo, I’ve found them, over here! They make me feel like I’m back in those jazz classes I’ve been missing. I recognize a lot of the moves from jazz dance (although I’m pretty hard-pressed to describe them, as everybody else is). But YBB outdoes my classes on one very important parameter: they make me feel wonderful! I just couldn’t stop smiling when doing these workouts. It’s the mood that Gillian and Teigh set. Kimberly may tell me that I should dance “like nobody’s watching”, but Gillian and Teigh make me feel like dancing as if nobody’s watching! I don’t care if I look silly, if I mess up some of the moves (the choreography’s flexible enough that it’s easy to recover without ending up on the wrong foot or facing the wrong direction), or if I’m not shaking my hips “correctly”, I just give it my best shot and have a blast. Where Turbo Kick left me feeling like a wallflower watching someone else’s party, and where Kukuwa tried to coax me into the party but left me feeling like I was just pretending half-heartedly, YBB Live pulls me right in.

Hip Hop Abs started with setting an intention to let go of fear. How appropriate, I thought, for a dancer who’s actually performed some hip-hop in the past but who utterly failed to get the choreography in Juliane Arney’s Quick Fix Hip-Hop, who has developed a distaste for the overplayed hip-hop that shows up everywhere in pop culture, and who now feels thoroughly hip-hop-handicapped. I needn’t have worried. The pace was fast (~120bpm, with some double-time movements), but the moves were simple and the routine symmetrical. Instead of getting caught up in all the details of foot patterns and arm placement, I just kept following along and moving to the beat, adapting if I ended up doing something differently from Gillian and Teigh (I don’t even feel right describing it as making a ‘mistake’, because their attitude is so accepting!). With plenty of TIFTTing (perhaps more than necessary), I had lots of opportunities to try it again and to experiment with adding a different flavor each time. It was so liberating to dance this way, focusing on moving instead of posing. That’s been my lifelong problem with dance; I often get stuck trying to get the angle of some position “just right”, and then my feet and arms get all tangled up and I lose the feeling and the flow of the dance. Not so here—it was all about the feeling, and the feeling was fantastic.

The abs section involved some crunches with the squishy ball, roll-ups, and teasers. I had to stop because I was laughing at the background exercisers who were tossing their balls back and forth to each other between repetitions—exactly the kind of feel-good spontaneity that YBB inspires. I suppose it could have been planned, but Gillian didn’t seem to expect it, judging from her laughter.

I really marvel at how successfully Gillian and Teigh have managed to create such delightful classes and to share their infectious enthusiasm even across a prerecorded format. They’re definitely a different genre from the typical workout video. While this won’t replace your standard cardio workout, your regular yoga session, or your most-reliable abs routine, the YBB Live series fills a niche all of its own. They make wonderful “sparks” during the day when you need a pick-me-up, an excuse to get moving, or just some “me” time. I’d originally toyed with the idea of creating a compilation of all the YBB dance segments, as someone else had suggested, but I’ve since realized that I particularly love the introductory segments. The intention-setting and the jazz-dance-based warm-ups are perfect for coaxing me into a workout or movement session when I’m feeling a little unmotivated. And because Gillian and Teigh are so friendly and accepting in their teaching style, all of my usual worries about getting the choreography right or working out “hard enough” fly away. That mantra of theirs about “spreading love?” I think it might actually work.

Instructor Comments:
Gillian and Teigh have a natural and charming screen presence that persuasively conveys their love for what they do. They’re friendly, funny, sincere, and spontaneous, and they teach their class in a way that celebrates differences yet keeps everyone in sync. I love it when they switch from having everyone say, “Hey,” to saying “Yeah,” or when they change from saying it three times to only once. I always expect someone to miss the cue and shout something out all alone, but the whole class follows right along even though I don’t believe it was all preplanned. Watching everyone’s different dance style both reassures and inspires me that I can do whatever I want.

KickDancer