Holly, a lovely young woman, also known as “the Chosen One” has been making some major efforts to get of her comfort zone for the past three weeks.

As the winner of a contest being held by Ottawa’s Hot 89.9 fm, she has been meeting every challenge set before her in order to win a nice stack of cash at the end of it all.

At the beginning of this week, I received a call from Josie, one of the hosts of the Morning Hot Tub radio show, inquiring about coming out to my class through the Old Ottawa South Community centre.

Now, I don’t actually listen to Hot 89.9fm. I had no idea what was going on, but I am sure Josie thought I would have some clue about the contest so did not really explain too much about it. As far as I knew, it was a cool idea, and that Holly would come, try the class, and if she liked it perhaps she would sign up afterwards.

I have a policy of “First Class Free” to encourage people to try it, as they either like it and sign up right away, or at least head off knowing that they were given a generous chance to experience it.

On Monday, I got a second call asking if Holly could recruit some people to come out as well. I said , yeah, sure, it is a small class, so there is room for some extra people, no problem.

That evening, I had arrived early as usual, was all set up and then headed out to the ladies room since I did not see anyone yet looking like they were lost. Oh – they were in the hallway, getting a bit turned around! I yelled down and pointed them in the right direction while I dealt with my trip across the hall.

I got back into the gym where I teach the class a few minutes later, and they were chatting excitedly about Holly’s new hair style [ looked very nice], some of her other challenges, and life in general as the ladies she had brought were friends.

Jenny, the other co-host of the show, had come with her, and was taking photos of the group { hope to see those soon} and everyone was having a pretty relaxed time, but there seemed to be a bit of underlying tension or uncertainty.

Since none of the other students had arrived yet, I thought I should try to connect at least a bit and was curious about the contest, so I was able to get more info about the whole thing by asking a few questions and joining in the conversation a bit. Then I started taking pics of them, so that also helped them relax!

Eventually, the regulars arrived, the 4 newbies were sheathed in chiffon veils, and we started class.

My usual caveats of “knees bent, hips tucked”, and “if it hurts, stop” were issued, and off we went.

They did as well as anyone would at their first class, and some of the group were actually already dancers I think, so they caught on pretty quickly!

Overall, I think they had fun, and while they may not take it again, I think there was some new respect generated for this fabulous dance form!

Thanks for coming out to play ladies!

You can check out Holly’s own thoughts here!

Oh, and I was surprised at how many of my own students were, “Is that Holly?” “Is that The Chosen One?”  

I do live under a rock obviously!