![]() ![]() Unlike other exercise Zumba is very easy to do, you just need to follow the instructor and enjoy sweating. You hate exercise if you haven’t tried Zumba fitness. It serves as a healthy and enjoyable exercise. Zumba is now gaining popularity in the country, as it encourages people from all ages to let loose in different dance moves while shedding pounds. It was an instant hit, and quickly became the most popular class at his gym. Soon he was leading his pupils through a fun series of dance steps-and Rumbacize was born. As the lively beats of Merengue and Rumba rang out, Beto drew upon his experience dancing in Salsa clubs and choreographing for local artists. ![]() With no music and a class to teach, he raced back to his car and scrounged up a cassette tape of Latin dance music. One day in the mid-90s, Beto reportedly forgot to bring his regular aerobics-style music tape to the group exercise class he was leading. The craze now known as Zumba fitness is said to have started as a mistake by Colombian trainer Alberto “Beto” Perez. “Ditch the Workout – Join the Party!” That’s the marketing slogan for Zumba fitness, which attracts exercisers with a fun fusion of dance moves from styles like Salsa, Merengue, Reggaeton and Flamenco, and the sort of choreography you might see in a nightclub. In fact, the Latin-dance inspired workout is reportedly performed by more than 12 million people at 110,000 sites, in 125 countries around the world. It has quickly grown to one of the most popular group exercise classes on the planet. Zumba is a total workout, combining all elements of fitness – cardio, muscle conditioning, balance and flexibility, boosted energy and a serious dose of awesome each time you leave class. As their sweat drips from their forehead the atmosphere gets energetic because their laugh and screams filled the place. Everyone is eager to dance like there’s no tomorrow and you can see everybody is enjoying. Its like dance flash mob, everybody is dancing to the rhythm, they step to the beat and they sweat a lot. At the most basic level, music and dance are the generative mechanisms of that communitas experience therefore, this study analyzes how these music and dance styles facilitate this experience.The Latin music begins and everybody starts moving their body parts as they follow the instructors every move. Those sentiments, which blossom from Zumba's exotic element and schizophonic mimetic representation, support the development of communitas. In gaining this representative power, Zumba becomes an opportunity for participants to engage with a fabricated notion of "Latinness" that ultimately leads to feelings of empowerment, self-confidence, and equality. Rather, this creative appropriation is an empowering mechanism that is attained, in part, through mimetic representation wherein the copy-the Zumba culture-can gain the power of the original. Zumba does not intend to misrepresent various world cultures for its own gain, and that is not the experience of the Zumba practitioners at Forest Meadows. Zumba's musics are used to create a generic image of primarily Latin peoples that idealizes them as sensualized beings, and this idea contributes to the exoticism of generic styles such as "Latin music." While engaging with this idea, I argue that this commodified Zumba experience is not an exploitative mechanism. As a multimillion dollar corporation, Zumba benefits by promoting the embodiment and creative appropriation of exotic cultures. Within the context of that exploration, this study analyzes the larger social and economic forces that surround these classes as a result of the mass-mediated Zumba phenomenon. It examines how music and dance are the generative mechanisms of communitas in this cultural space. This thesis is a study of the functions of music and dance in Zumba classes held at the Forest Meadows Park community center in Tallahassee, Florida. ![]()
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