It’s Saturday morning in San Miguel de Allende and time for Zumba! Dress in comfortable clothes, put on your sneakers and head to Parque Benito Juarez for the 8:30am class, where the music will draw you in, like the Pied Piper. Zumba is a Latin dance inspired fitness program created in the 1990s by Columbian dancer and choreographer Alberto “Beto” Perez. Zumba’s choreography incorporates hip-hop, soca, samba, salsa, merengue, mambo, martial arts, and some Bollywood and belly dance moves. It’s aerobic and lots of fun.
The story is that in 1986, Perez forgot his tape of aerobics music for a class he was teaching. He took the tapes available in his car—consisting of traditional Latin salsa and merengue music—and improvised a class using this non-traditional aerobics music.
Click on the start arrow for a taste of Zumba from Parque Juarez…
In 2001, Beto brought his new dance-fitness style to Miami, Florida, and met entrepreneurs Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion. All three hailed from Colombia and shared the vision to bring this dynamic dance-fitness class to the masses. The three Albertos formed an alliance and created a business, calling it Zumba Fitness. Their Zumba Fitness Total Body Transformation System DVD Set has a record 900 reviews on Amazon.com (over 600 are 5 star). Doing a live class is the great, but if that is not possible or you want to practice at home, the DVDs get rave reviews.
My hometown Zumba teachers, Alyson & Mary Jo, are the inspiration for this post. If you live on or visit Orcas Island they also have groovin’ Zumba classes twice a week at the Odd Fellows Hall (Monday morning at 10:30am and again on Wednesday morning at 9:30am).
To read our other posts from San Miguel de Allende, click below: