As a participant, all I can say about this release is thank heavens our gym is starting to mix in old tracks. The music in 71 must be the worst yet, and the running woman and Thriller moves are ridiculous. The instructors in my gym have been bombarded with requests since the release party to deep-six the running woman track first. The most often heard comment about that one around the gym has been "It makes the Fergilicious track palatable." Since that is one of the most reviled tracks in our gym, that comment says a lot about the running woman track.
I understand wanting the program developers wanting to do something different--it must be difficult to create something new as often as Les Mills puts out new releases. But please, please, PLEASE--no more interminal looped music tracks with repetitive phrases!!! There are plenty of musical arrangements with reasonable licensing fees that have real lyrics, and true verses and choruses. Also, the influx of absurd hand and dance movements (and I took dancing for years, so I know the difference between good and bad) has to stop. Case in point--the Naomi Campbell move. An added bonus to better music would be less boring choreography, and less reliance the contrived hand movements and steps.
The average Body Stepper is not the hard-core, must-exercise-at-all-costs athlete. We are people with busy lives who try to shoe-horn a few worthwhile, healthy hours for ourselves into our weeks. We're looking for something that exercises body AND mind. I come out of that class dripping with sweat and having had a fantastic physical workout. However, what once left me with a buoyant mood and feeling mentally cleansed as I left the gym now leaves me disgruntled, and dreading a return the next day for Body Pump (because the music there has gone downhill as well). I used to look forward to going to Body Step when we had a new release, because once I learned it I had a few weeks to exercise on autopilot before I had to start recalling old steps. Now I pray for the day the instructors are allowed to mix in old releases and get rid of the new material, because the moves have become increasingly contrived and the music is simply noise to be endured (often at high volume--which does NOT improve it). We've lost a significant number of Body Step time slots in our gym over the past year and a half because we don't have the numbers to support them, despite the fact that our instructors are a fantastic group of people. Our numbers are dropping because participants are increasingly turned off by the music and choreography.
Please don't tell me to switch to a gym with a different program. There's a lot more to choosing a gym than simply liking a particular brand of group fitness program. The gym is, at heart, a family, and we have wonderful people and the best facilities in the city. I'm not willing to give that up strictly because I'm tired of the recent spate of releases. I am eternally optimistic that "this too shall pass" and we'll get back to the releases that make me try to justify taking classes more often rather than making me force myself to go to the gym.