Please don't make me say "Zumba es fiesta"

[parasitegirl]

I enjoy Zumba twice a week.

I am not proud of this fact. I don't recommend that other people take zumba classes. If they do, I ask that they watch not to injure themselves, don't believe that any dance form they are shown is an accurate portrayal of that genre, and they don't blame me.

I have been meaning to mention that for the last month my Sunday night class has grown even more surreal with the addition of hava nagila in the usual mix. Don't get me wrong, my love of balkan/roma/klexmer/fusiony stuff means that I quite enjoy many of the versions of hava nagila in my mix....

I don't know if I've mentioned that Japanese school children all know how to perform a basic circle dance to hava nagila. I like to forget this fact because gyms full of Japanese children dancing to hava nagila kinda freaks me out. In Zumba class the circle dance is not much different than what I have seen children do, but classes of 30-60 year old Japanese  men and women top children for "freaking me out when dancing to hava nagila." Adults in zumba class inexplicably only shout out "nagila!" when singing along.

Tonight's Zumba class will not have hava nagila, but it will have a new song with moves I have yet to determine if the instructor thinks are dance hall or bellydance (but to my eye are neither).

Comments

[downrightamazed.livejournal.com]

The Zumba classes at my gym (Wisconsin Athletic Club) are sad, shabby affairs, possessed of a couple half-hearted students who inevitably quit after just a couple weeks. I know this 'cos the downtown branch kept shifting the timeslot of Zumba around in a misguided and wholly unsuccessful effort at catching the "after work" crowd or the "lunchtime" crowd, etc. Anyway for a while it was right after my pilates class (which continues to be insanely popular, due in large part to our intensely fit and brutal teacher) so I got to observe the sad phenomena described above.

The rap on it that I heard from a couple of the trainers is that the dance aspect terrifies most people, the "serious gym rats" don't take it seriously, and the dancers all take the dance-as-exercise classes that are actual dance classes taught by actual dancers so they can actually, you know, dance.

I have no personal opinion on the matter, just the above collection of observations, though I'll admit to falling into the "dance aspect of it terrifies me" crowd, and from what I could hear the music is awful, which is the surest way to drive me out of any place or event.