It’s Friday and my mind is turning to music after a week of work. This week, I was inspired by my seniors exercise class.
I start every work week with some of my favourite music. Every Monday morning I lead an exercise class for seniors with arthritis. The main point of the class is to thoroughly but gently mobilise all the joints for about 45 to 50 minutes. The secondary gain is that we get to enjoy some great songs and have fun! Most of the time we’re seated (in chairs) but with two songs standing behind the chairs.
I like to have a wide range of music for them to enjoy each week, some fast, and some slow. So I look for songs that I love myself, but that I think they’ll enjoy, to choreo for my ladies (and the occasional gentleman). It’s usually a combination of oldies, a little country sometimes, and some more modern ones of suitable tempo, with maybe one or two classical thrown in. I have six routines that I rotate (plus two special ones for Xmas), and nearly all of them have different songs not repeated in any other routine.
This is just a small sampling.
Tokens - The Lion Sleeps Tonight – This is a good warm up song.
Andrea Bocelli - La donna e' mobile – mostly hand movements, with some miming of piano playing and conducting the orchestra.
Alison Moyet - That Ole Devil Called Love – this is slow movements, and I mix things up a bit to make it a bit of a brain teaser.
Cilla Black - Step Inside Love – Mostly big movements of the arms and legs
Fred Astaire - Puttin On The Ritz – This one we use a hat. It’s fun and it’s good moving things from hand to hand quickly.
Johnny Lee & Lane Brody - Yellow Rose of Texas – Part of this one is some head movements.
Part of this trumpet concerto by Telemann. We just do the first section (about 2 minutes). Another hand routine.
Van Morrison & The Chieftains - Irish Heartbeat – This finishes the session. We do hand exercises, including ones using a scarf.
Hmm, looking over my selection, it looks like we do mainly hand movements, but we don’t really. Out of about 15 songs, maybe 4 or 5 would be hands, plus either a hat or a scarf routine.
If any of you are interested, I can give you a more detailed run down of the exercises we do to each song.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully listening and enjoying at least some of them.
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Previous posts about music and entertainment:
• Benefits of joining a community choir
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1957 to 1966
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1967 to 1971
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1972 to 1976
• Singing carols with the NZ Symphony Orchestra PLUS my best loved Christmas music
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1976 to 1983
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1983 to 1988
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1988 to 1994
• If crying in movies was an Olympic sport
• 60 years of my favourite music – 1994 to 2001
• 60 years of my favourite music – 2001 to 2007
• 60 years of my favourite music – 2008 to 2014
• Remembering some artists who passed away in 2016
• 60 years of my favourite music – some randoms
