Monika Schnarre breaks a sweat while dancing like a diva at her first Beyography dance class

Channel your inner Beyoncé in T.O.’s latest dance class craze that pays homage to the pop star

Let me just preface this with the acknowledgement that my dancing skills are not good. 

When actor Adrian Zmed (Grease 2) pulled me onto the dance floor one night — I ended up punching him in the face (with my dance moves). So, when I was asked to check out a Beyography dance class (a class solely dedicated to learning Beyoncé’s choreographed routines), I was a little nervous.

I do not do group classes. Period. When I used to live in New York City in the ’80s, and aerobic classes were all the rage, I was always on one side of the room — and the rest of the class was on the other — often feeling like a giraffe amongst a coalition of spry cheetahs.

With trepidation I arrive at Elevation Dancentre Studio

Our instructor, Nicky Nasrallah, has been teaching these Beyoncé dance routine classes for two and a half years. He teaches seven classes each week in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa — regularly filling classes with up to 30 people. Nasrallah’s friends encouraged him to start the classes because he knew every single dance routine of Beyoncé’s. Each week one song’s routine is taught to people of all ages and abilities — in its entirety.

I arrive and some of the participants in the class are looking pretty serious — you can tell this is not their first dance class. Though many of them opted for flats instead of heels (Nasrallah teaches the class with the added height), I opt to get the full Beyoncé experience and don a pair of black pumps.

We start with some light stretching as a warm-up and then get right into the first moves for the song “Diva.” Nasrallah says this is an easier routine than most. We’ll see about that.

Knowing that Beyoncé is not a trained dancer gives me a little comfort … just a little. Within five minutes, I have a whole new respect for dancers and will never look at a music video in the same way. This is hard! But it’s also a lot of fun.

The routine is taught in stages:  piece by piece in slow motion, then faster and finally full speed to music. Soon we are flipping our hair, strutting our stuff and shaking our booties.

After an hour, we’re halfway through the song and feeling “bootylicious”!

Nasrallah says he’s not looking for perfection. He just wants his students to have a good time (check) and have everyone get the moves down (generally). After two hours of shaking and strutting, the class has the routine down, and we leave feeling exhilarated and excited to try a new song next week.

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