“If we have to do Chubby Checker’s twist again I’m going to scream.
I’ll throw in the towel, leave my gym of four years, and find somewhere else to dance – somewhere without the pretend pole dancing, the cheesy line dancing, and most of all - without doing the TWIST. For some cruel reason, the dance sensei took away Gloria Estefan. Daddy Yankee soon followed and before long all the latino music and dance moves had been methodically removed from the dance routine, replaced by… Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers (eek)!
Murder - this is absolute murder for a fitness dance lover who plans her days off around the dance class times… and for what? To do the twist again?”
I put these negative thoughts out of my head. Sure, it’s March and I’m on the university spring vacation, teaching a few private lessons a week. But from sunrise till sunset my mind is focused on my courses – deadlines for proposals, papers, projects, and presentations rapidly approaching. My only relief is the sweat that drips from my brow when I dance to the music I love and let it take me away from the daily pressures besieging me.
The lights dim in Studio A. 24 Japanese housewives, 16 Japanese grandmothers, 12 Japanese grandfathers and 1 tall blond foreigner take their places on the dance floor. “Baby look at me… and tell me what you see… Fame! I wanna live foreva” warms up our cold muscles; Britney brings up our heart rates with ‘you wanna piece of me’. And then it happens. Just when I’m getting ready to get low for some Daddy Yankee booty shaking reggaeton I hear the instructor screech “TU-WIS-TO!” and on comes Jive Bunny.
I want to get out of Studio A – fast! But, I have to save face. This is Japan after all. I can’t leave. I can’t cry. I can’t even show mild discomfort. I know that I’m going to have to tough it out until the class ends. The seconds become minutes, the minutes turn into hours, or so it seems, and when we finally finish lifting our legs like dogs on the neighbors’ bushes and slowing gyrating our hips in the way generations past deemed obscene I vow never, ever to do the twist again. I grab my towel and my water bottle. I take one last look around. Goodbye Studio A. I’ll miss you… or maybe not.
That night I started thinking, “So smarty-pants, now that you’ve quit the gym, what are you going to do to stay (get back into) shape?” Within a week I had the answer – ZUMBA! “Zumba, yeah, I’ve heard of that,” many say. But you don’t really know what it is until you do it. Zumba is an aerobic dance class that fuses Latin rhythms (salsa, merengue, cumbia, reggaeton, etc) and other international dance music (soca, calypso, hip hop, etc) with fitness moves to make for a very fun and dynamic fitness class http://www.zumba.com/us/about.
But… there’s a problem: Zumba isn’t offered anywhere in Osaka. Well, if I can’t find it then I’m going to have to bring it here myself. So, with a ticket to New Zealand in one hand, my guidebook in the other and a backpack full of dance clothes, I take off to Auckland (Hamilton, actually, which is about 100 km south of Auckland) to participate in Oceania’s first zumba instructor workshop ever, April 4-5!
In just two short days, Maria, our vivacious instructor trains our small group of 12 in the basics of zumba: how to listen to the music and break it down into different parts; the different steps to incorporate in a dance routine and adding variety; and more importantly she shares her enthusiasm for zumba, which quickly spreads over us, like an contagion – the good kind (there is a good kind, isn’t there?)
So, prepared with the tools (music, clothes and more music) and the desire to dance, I am ready to take Osaka for a zumba ride. Practice, practice, practice is required, and I’m afraid that my neighbors below must hate me by now. But (cross your fingers) soon I’ll be teaching in studios.
Of course, with business (dance) always comes a little pleasure, and I was welcomed with very big arms (and hearts) into Pete’s house. Pete, Leon and Ayu, friends from Auckland (who I met in Japan) gave me the royal tour of Auckland and its surrounding areas: Piha beach, Anawhata lookout on the west; Coromandel Peninsula on the east; Auckland, the city of sails and its many dormant volcanoes right in the middle.
The pictures on the left show a small portion of New Zealand’s beauty. But, what really makes NZ such wonderful place is the people – they’re warm, funny, outdoorsy, practical, down to earth folk. And they drink a lot of really strong coffee, which along with the dancing has kept me buzzing for weeks.
I’ll leave you with some advice from my good friend Kari that has served me well: Dance like nobody’s watching!
