4th of July and Bikram Hot Zumba

Rendered speechless by this event and completely flummoxed by where to begin, I’ll start at the beginning. It all began, innocently enough, with Dale’s Facebook post that read:
Z U M B A ……. the 4th of July!
Celebrate Freedom, Choice, and Opportunity!
Work off your holiday before the holiday begins….
Creative Spark, Mt. Pleasant at 10AM on Thursday 7/4
It will be a FUN class! yessssssssssssssss……..
Oh how naive we can be. I heard several in Wednesday’s class remark how hot it was at that facility. Pfffft, I thought. It’s Charleston. It’s hot everywhere. Think 75 people in a corrugated metal room the size of a McDonald’s bathroom on hot asphalt, bearing the full brunt of the morning sun, all dancing as fast as they can. While, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but they did hand out iced wash cloths half way through class.
Props to Dale, it was a beautiful celebration of America for the Fourth of July however. Young, old, children, first timers, regulars, men, women, what a group. And my first ever picture of me actually doing Zumba. Ready…… Here it is.

Can you see me? No? In the very, very, very, back corner, with the red shirt, and green iced washcloth on my head? No? Still not? Thank God.
I had a revelation today though. Dale has this one song where I just can’t keep up with her, them, or the song. I didn’t know how to explain it, so I did some research so I could. It has to do with “musical time signature.” The musicians know exactly what I’m talking about. For regular folk, think of the beat you feel with a song you like or dance to….that 1,2,3-1,2,3-1,2,3 or that 1,2,3,4-1,2,3,4; which are beats per measure or musical signature time. And of course, the movements match those beats. Dale has actually found a song on 64/64 time, or with 64 beats per measure and has actually devised choreography in which she does 64 distinct movements a second. She and the entire class of women look like hummingbirds at that point to me. My eyes can’t even see that fast. I’m so slow, it’s taken me five weeks to even come up with the words to describe moving to music that fast.
But, there was a Gift from the Universe. There was another guy in class Wednesday and two guys there today. They xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. (Dale issued blog censorship instructions last week. Just a couple of things, 14 pages, single spaced. She’s known me for three years so I’d be disappointed if she trusted my judgment or my filter). I think I can safely say however, I feel better about my own Zumba performance and I no longer need to go see Brad Pitt in that new Zombie movie.
I woke up on the couch at 5:30 am the other day to…the Zumba infomercial. Believing in synchronicity, I watched it. A blonds actually said, “it’s so EASY”. I hit rewind on TiVo. Yup. That’s what she said. Hit record. I have your picture. I’m coming to hunt you down.
Lastly, I do periodically want to shamelessly promote Dale’s class. Www.zumbabeat.com. Not everyone will like it of course, but for those that do, it’s a transformational experience. A little girl, maybe about 9, was there today. Both her parents and her granddad, came with her, because she loves Zumba so much. Her Dad told me she tells them she always gets on the front row. I have never seen a child so filled with joy. Her family came to Zumba for the first time, because they wanted to experience that joy with her. Props to you Dale for giving that little girl the gift at such a young age of associating working out with such joy. What a change we could make with obesity in this country with that model. Love, Joy, Dance, Music, Friends, Family. How cool is that!
“I am the Walrus, Goo goo, ga joob”.