"Different," Elena said. "I feel... grounded."
The class was small. Five women and one very confused man named Gary. They sat in a circle on those thin, blue gym mats that offered the cushioning of a folded newspaper. At the front of the room stood the instructor, a woman named Beatrix who had the serene, terrifying smile of a saint and knees that looked like they were made of polished steel.
"How do you feel?" Beatrix asked, rolling up the mats. knee dancing (1988)
"Don't think about the friction," Beatrix shouted over the drums. "Think about the spin! Be the top!"
The fluorescent lights of the community center hummed, a sound that had become the soundtrack of 1988 for the neighborhood women. It was a Tuesday, the air thick with the smell of floor wax and desperate determination. This was the era of Jazzercise, of leotards cut high, of the burning need to sweat your way to a better you. "Different," Elena said
Elena, nursing a throbbing ACL she’d tweaked trying to keep up with the aerobics instructor three weeks prior, ripped the flyer down.
Elena walked out into the cool night air of 1988. The neon sign of the video rental store buzzed across the street. She walked to her car, and for the first time in a month, she didn't favor her left leg. She walked with a glide in her step, a remnant of the rhythm she’d found on the floor. Five women and one very confused man named Gary
In 1988, the most famous song about dancing that involves body parts (and is often misheard/misremembered as "Knee Dancing") is: