Your next delicious instalment

A practical post, Showgirls, looking at delights to come.

Firstly - don't shimmy up for a class next Wednesday (25th October) 'cos there isn't one. We'll be loosening our laces and slipping off our stillies for half term.

The next class will be 1st November. We'll probably be finishing off The Other Woman in that class. (That sounds rather more sinister than it is, Dear Reader. "The Other Woman" is the name of our current dance routine and not the proposed victim of some sort of murderous group revenge fest.)

Here at Burlicous Towers we're choreographing like crazy. Our new routine will be ready for 8th November, but we're a Partner-in-sequins down that week and haven't decided whether to launch the new routine then or not. We'll keep you all updated re. a launch date, as we know some of you are desperate to get back to strutting your stuff with us at the first hint of a new number.

Have a lovely Burlicious-free week (as if there is such a thing) and we'll see you in a couple of weeks or soon after that for another drug-free injection of glamour; hilarity; irresponsible clothing and "feel-good" wiggling.

Yours, practising the "bum-first-chair-dismount" shuffle (you know who you are :-) ),

Burlicious x

Dressed and undressed

We choreograph our own routines.

This involves we Burlicious Three getting together here at Burlicious Towers for hours of invention, hilarity, discovery, delight and the summary rejection of some truly sub-standard moves.

Our petite choreography space (aka "the kitchen") presents a number of challenges - a narrow space; unforgivably hard surfaces; and, typically, a rather underwhelmed cat.

To our astonishment, we seem to excel at developing beautiful, neat, elegant moves. The constant refrain between us is the call to "smut it up a bit". Ah, Dear Reader, if you could see the outtakes that that instruction produces, you would cry with laughter.

And yet, when you take our creations into class and see them danced by a galaxy of women in corsets and sequins and fishnets and heels and frilly drawers and little daft shorts and spangly tops, those moves that looked no more than pretty for three women dancing in a kitchen in slippers and jumpers suddenly look sensuous, seductive and sexy.

We're learning. "It'll look better in the outfits," we now say to each other as we design a routine. And, do you know, it bloomin' well does!

Yours, loving that sprinkling of stardust,

Burlicious x

And once more with feeling

We teach a routine by building it up a little bit a time. We show a few steps as we talk through them; then we step it through with the troupe as we talk it through again; then we all do it together again; and then we do it to the music while we bellow instructions. We'll then do those steps a few more times before we add on the next piece of the routine.

Last night we got to a part of the routine that we Burlicious Three think of as "the little kicky legs". We've simplified it from the original car crash creation, but the timing is still a bit of a b*gger.

Having seen the troupe have their first go at it, I said to them, as I often do: "OK, we'll do that another few times."

"Meaning," says one of our experienced showgirls, "that was crap and I have no idea what you lot were doing."

Busted.

Actually, to be accurate, it wasn't crap and we have no expectation that the entire troupe will get every step perfectly the first time that they dance it (no reason why you should, Showgirls, given that we often can't get it right and we create the blessed thing!). However, it was, as the first run through of a few new steps often is, entertainingly varied, creative and individual.

Ah, Showgirls, like a field of windmills, all dancing to your own personal breeze with legs going every which way, it was a proper treat to see. Of course, what you now don't notice is how perfectly you are doing the steps that were tricky for you just a week ago. You catch on fast, you lot, you really do.

Yours, bursting our corsets with pride,

Burlicious x