I think this may be my favorite among the YBB Live series. There are other dance workout videos in the style of hip-hop, Latin dance, and Bollywood dance, and other sculpting and fusion workouts, but so far I haven’t found anything else similar to the cabaret / burlesque moves done here. (I can’t comment on comparisons to the workouts by Carmen Electra, Jeff Costa, or Sheila Kelley, unfortunately. Go-Go is also unique, but I think my style is better suited to burlesque! Perhaps I’ve found my inner exotic dancer. But I suspect that the dance moves here are more influenced by Broadway shows than the striptease workouts are.)

Cardio Cabaret / Burlesque Style was faster than I’d expected for the style of dance. But since YBB is about moving rather than posing, I just went right along with them. (And this is “cardio” cabaret after all, anyway!) There were some classic Fosse-inspired movements, like extending your arms down by your hips and flexing your hands to the right, then left, but done much more casually. Another familiar one was the “knocking-knee” move where you and open and close your legs in first position plié, while dangling and circling each arm from the elbow, kind of like a marionette. The “burlesque”-style moves include pantomimes of pulling on gloves and stockings, plus plenty of hip swivels for which Gillian urges us, “Make it flirty,” making eyes at the camera herself.

After the dance segment comes some standing ballet, with the “swirly leg lifts” another reviewer described (these are developpés to the side: passé, turn in, turn out, then extend), and a move that Teigh called “cannonball belly” (developpés to the front in parallel, contracting the torso and extending the arms forward). There is also a small amount of balancing in relevé and on forced-arch, with a few spinal rolls tossed in. Some floorwork at the end includes “spider walks”, which are like seated fan kicks. These moves aren’t strictly ballet, but mostly just capture the flavor of it—actually, they’re more jazz than ballet. As Teigh encouraged us here, “Find your inner femininity!” (to which Gillian added, “Or your masculinity!” in honor of the one guy in the class). Short though it is, the ballet segment here appeals to me more than many ballet segments in other videos, which are more traditional in their format. Evidently I prefer the jazz-dance influence in Gillian and Teigh’s choreography. It feels more natural and flowing to me, free of the classical-ballet constraints that dictate moving only in certain prescribed directions.

I really love the non-judgmental, celebratory atmosphere here that persuades me that I can do anything. Having background exercisers who look like (and are) real people who enjoy these classes themselves reminds me that I’m doing this to have fun and to feel good about myself. So what if someone doesn’t have a ballet background, and so what if Gillian or Teigh loses her balance while talking? All I care about when I’m doing these workouts is that I love to dance.

Instructor Comments:
Gillian is particularly delightful to watch in this video, in the way she hams it up for the camera. There’s also some charming physical banter between Gillian and Teigh when they playfully bounce into the other person’s space during some of the moves.

KickDancer