I am a Zumba© addict. I’m not very good at it. Actually, I’m terrible at it, but that doesn’t stop me from going every time the doors open.
As a little girl, I wanted to be a dancer, among about a kajillion other things, but in my evolving awareness, I discovered that dancing was against my mother’s religion, so I stopped dancing. (That awareness was the beginning of my suppression of all things fun and started a long list of things I wasn’t supposed to enjoy.) Now, in my still-early 60’s, I have taken up dancing in name of fitness, and it has blown the doors wide open on fun!
If you’ve never seen Zumba© performed live by a bunch of sweating women ranging from size 0 to 20, wearing a variety of garb, dancing at all levels of skill, you have never seen sexy. We are led by a woman who has a cult following, as probably most Zumba© teachers have. When we dance, we watch her and we feel like we look like her. Because her hips are free-floating, we believe our hips are moving in those seductive figure 8 patterns. This would be laughable, except it’s not. The feeling is so strong and so collective, that a man would have to be dead to be oblivious to the primal “womaness” that pervades the gym.
(If you are familiar with the ritual of Dionysus (aka Bacchus), you will understand when I say that Rick Santorum better not step in front of a Zumba© class. Ever.)
Zumba© has released me from what remnants were left of my mother’s religion and given me back my sense of power as a woman.
Here is a poem I wrote for my Zumba© teacher: The Six-Thirty Class
She coos, “Come play with me.”
And we do.
She strokes her hair and commands,
“Put on your short skirts, ladies,
and your high heels.”
We slip stilettos over rubber soles
and shimmy our hips
across the floor for her.
She leads us through cha chas
and fierce lunges.
And we believe
we are beautiful and strong
because she tells us so.
We would gyrate to Hell and back
for her,
for the words we crave,
for the words
no man will ever say.
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