I used to have a black belt in worrying. I would wake up every night around 4am fretting about threats to obliterate civilisation and the effect time was having on my jowls, breasts and butt, which were heading south faster than a migrating goose.
In my 50s, I felt obligated to try to hold back time. I joined a gym and discovered that I would rather be put on hold for hours by HMRC than do deadlifts. And is it just me or does the Pilates reformer have more than a passing resemblance to the Rack?
Then I stumbled upon a way to exercise my body and flood my brain with endorphins. Dance! It offered a moment of grace when time pauses, and I evade the number on my birth certificate.
It all started at a Beyoncé gig in June 2025. Up to that point, I had only ever danced around my kitchen. Beyoncé inspired me to up my game. There was something about the way she strutted, shimmied and slut-dropped that was instantly addictive.
I asked advice on where to learn from my friend Melinda McKenna who was choreographer for the Spice Girls, Boyzone and even Queen Bey herself. She responded by sending an Instagram link to Ralph Beaubrun’s dance classes. Beaubrun, 45, is a charismatic Haitian-French singer and choreographer whose addictive and high-energy routines have amassed almost three million followers on Instagram. His song-length routines are set to Afro-Caribbean rhythms, house and pop. He films his classes from a Parisian dance studio, often focusing on one enthusiastic dancer – a man immersed in the music or a pregnant woman grooving with ecstatic abandon.
What unites them is the joy of dance. Lost down an Insta rabbit hole, I couldn’t stop watching them. For £16 a month I could subscribe to his online dance tutorials and master the routines from home. I signed up and was sent a catalogue of classes ranging from beginner to advanced, from Britney to Bad Bunny. A new routine arrived every month.
Charlotte with Ralph at Pineapple Studios
My four grown-up children were terrified I had taken up dance as a new way to embarrass them. My husband even asked if I intended to do an interpretative dance at his birthday party. So I banned them all, plus my two dogs, from our kitchen, propped open my computer and selected a routine to Earth, Wind & Fire’s September. Breaking down every dance move, Beaubrun builds each sequence into a routine.
At my first attempt, I was embarrassingly bad. He went left; I headed right. He was quick; I was slow. Less Beyoncé, more Mr Bean.
I persevered, spending 15 minutes daily jiggy-jigging about, until a week later I finally mastered the routine. I was toning up and boosting my neuroplasticity. Learning, remembering and adapting to dance sequences stimulates the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for memory. According to Dr Tommy Wood, associate professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Washington, 73 per cent of dementia cases are preventable. Trials reveal dancing beats most other types of exercise for activating multiple brain regions at once, acting like fertiliser for the brain.
‘Studies show there’s nothing like it,’ says Dr Wood. The news may still be filled with apocalyptic stories but dance has banished my 4am wide awakes, and now I sleep through the night.
After months of shimmying alone, if you squinted your eyes and were feeling generous, you might just mistake me for one of Beyoncé’s backing dancers. So when Beaubrun announced a world tour, I forked out £60 for a 90-minute dance class at Pineapple Studios in London’s Covent Garden earlier this year, joining 70 of his acolytes in a large mirror-clad space.
Choreographer Ralph leading a class
Waiting for the session to start, I chatted to a working mother of three who confided that his class was the only thing that she did for herself every day.
Beaubrun bounced into the studio, igniting the room. ‘The next hour and a half is only about joy,’ he assured us. ‘And the freedom of letting go.’
Britney Spears’ I’m A Slave 4 U started up and I started following Beaubrun. Britney sang, ‘Dancing’s what I love, yeah (now watch me).’ So, watch me. Yeah. I was dancing. Entirely in the moment. My limbs responding to the rhythm, moving to the song. Nothing else mattered. I had no past and no present, no responsibilities, no anxieties about the state of the world, or the fate of the planet.
And for the briefest moment, I stopped time.
@ralphbeaubrundanceclasses
