Latin-infused dance workouts are 'good heart medicine'
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 6:56 PM PDT
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleBare feet bounce on the soft woven carpet, and bodies swing and turn to the beat of salsa and cha-cha-cha in a downtown exercise space. The front door is open to the hallway, and when a woman leaving a neighboring jewelry business stops to lock her door, her body instinctively moves to the beat.
That’s Zumba.
“Good heart medicine,” says Patti Rae, the local Pilates instructor who has added a Zumba class to her offerings at Body Balance Pilates Studio in downtown Longview.
The fitness program was cooked up by a Miami choreographer named Alberto ‘Beto’ Perez about 10 years ago. Brilliant Beto set a cardio workout to Latin dance music.
Then he and two business-minded buddies marketed the catchy routines and training sessions under the name Zumba, from a Colombian word that means fast moves.
They got that right.
For an hour, women in the local class will step, kick, leap, swivel and shimmy at a good clip. They wear free-flowing skirts or lightweight, roomy pants with tank tops, and no shoes. After a moderate warm-up, they speed from dance to dance, their faces sheened with sweat and joy.
“You can’t help it -- the music just takes you,” said Rae, who attended Zumba lessons and got certified in May in Olympia. She said teaching exercise feeds her other work as a bookkeeper.
“That’s how you get energy -- you keep working out.”
Zumba borrows from merengue, salsa, tango, mambo, rumba, calypso and cha-cha. A few threads of culture and history still live in the dances.
Rae tells her class about cumbia, for instance, the sugar cane dance. On the surface, it’s a progression of swiveling hips, bending to the front, and sweeping arm movements, which she tells them are reminiscent of slicing the cane and whacking it on the ground.
African women brought as slaves to Colombia were chained by one leg, so the Zumba version of the dance incorporates a dragging movement with one let that remembers the experience.
“It’s amazing that these women found the passion to dance even though they were in chains,” Rae said.
Not all of Zumba is fast.
“We slow it down occasionally with marching in place and hand movements,” Rae said, to a beautiful merengue melody that has fluid arm and movements, or the slower, more sultry tempo of tango, with its eight-count measures danced with an imaginary partner.
Rae winds up the hour with quad and hip stretches and slow walking in a circle.
“It’s just fun,” said KT Blue of Longview, who combines Zumba with Pilates workouts. “I was looking for a new way to exercise.” Doing Zumba, she said, “I use every muscle. I do that in Pilates, too, but this is a different kind of fun -- more social, feeling the music.”
A.J. Ludlow of Kelso also takes Pilates from Rae, a regimen she started after a shoulder injury. Ludlow added Zumba, she said, “to burn off calories.”
Karen Comella of Rose Valley had to curtail her yoga routine because of tenderness in her wrists. Thanks to Zumba, she has kept moving. “I love to dance,” Comella said. “I love rhythm. It’s joyful. This is right up my alley.”
Join the fun
What: Zumba, a franchise exercise program inspired by Latin music, with DVDs and videos sold on the Web and through infomercials. Last year Zumba was showcased on “The Today Show.”
Who: Patti Rae, owner of Body Balance, attended training in Olympia and is certified to teach Zumba Gold, a version for mature exercisers.
Where: Taught locally at Body Balance Pilates Studio, 1329 Broadway, Longview. For times and rates, call 423-4950.
Rae will also begin teaching a Zumba class through Longview Parks and Recreation, at 10 a.m. Wednesdays, beginning Sept. 17 at the Longview Woman’s Club. For information on that class, call 442-5400.
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