When the class started, Richy gave a little pep talk, followed by the chorus choreography to “Telephone” with Asiel and Montana. After that, we spent about two hours learning a 1.5 min routine to a “Judas/Schieße”. It was hard as hell, even just watching them go through it had me out of breath.

Afterwards, Richy spoke about Gaga’s journey for about 10 minutes. One of the stories he told was how when Gaga first showed up to rehearsals in 2008, he laughed at her and told her the industry was going to have a real problem with her (in a good way!).

Finally, the dancers sat us down and opened the floor up to questions. Some boring questions were asked at first, but things got interesting when somebody asked Richy and the dancers if they had heard ARTPOP, or if they had started choreographing and working with Gaga at all. Richy smiled and said they had been working on a few things, but that it was secret and we would find out “sooner than you think.”

Richard swiftly moved onto the next question, which was if he was still friends with Laurieann Gibson, or Boomkack, as we’ve all grown to know her as. The entire room, including Richy and the dancers, laughed and he finally said that we all probably knew the answer to that already.

Richy also mentioned that the Born This Way Ball is about Gaga’s life before The Fame. We asked if that meant ARTPOP was her first album and he smiled and proceeded to the next question. We knew he wasn’t able to talk much about ARTPOP, so we asked him about the video of Gaga allegedly tearing her hip while performing “Scheiße” in Montreal, the week the tour was postponed and eventually canceled. He explained that over time, muscles don’t cooperate the way we want them to and that’s what happened with Gaga. He said that fans were saying that she tore her hip in that performance, but that wasn’t the case at all. He said as the tour progressed, the existing injury got worse and she was in a lot of pain, which forced Gaga to cancel “everything.”

After the open floor questions ended, everybody else took photos, while I spoke to Montana and Asiel about if they have normal lives until Gaga decides to call them up to fly out and work on ARTPOP. They simply looked at each other and smiled.

“Next question!”

Richard Jackson’s Dance Down has two more stops left: one in Washington, D.C. on June 1st and the final date in Seattle on May 4th. Ticket and registration info can be found at richysquirrel.com/tour.