I just helped a woman in a community group who saw a video of a dance fitness class and said “where can I take a class like this? This isn’t Zumba.” I knew exactly what she meant and what she was looking for when she showed me the video and without knowing the name of the dance format.
Zumba and many other formats like it – even Nia and LaBlast – teach song specific choreography. There’s a downside to this for a real dancer at heart. A dance junkie gets hungry for their fix because they have a performer that lives inside of them. That performer has A LOT to express and a desire to REALLY BE SEEN!
For the “song specific” formats, each song will contain only 3-5 moves at most because a song itself lasts anywhere from 3.5-7.5 minutes. In this short timeframe a student can’t learn and retain more information than that. And then after every song, the format starts that whole process again.
Many students never feel accomplished. They don’t feel like they’re dancing. It’s not meeting their hunger to really express. They don’t feel like they have a performance ready repertoire in their body. They don’t have FB or IG worthy material to post because it’s 3-5 moves that repeat over and over and over, so it just looks like they’re working out in a “dancer-cize” way. Not dancing. Remember I’m talking about the people who love dance and it’s important to them. They might not be aware it is a performer who is driving them, because they might not necessarily even have aspirations to turn pro, but it’s that intense hunger for dance that makes the performer, who is likely in the shadow of all the other identities people have. This isn’t important for everyone but it’s important for some – especially this woman who asked the question. Now, we can debate until the cows come home if 3 moves set to music repeated over and over is enough to call dance or is it just the monotony of the treadmill!! Boo- yaaaa- I said it! It’s a dancing treadmill! Students really feel this. The moves aren’t enough.
The other alternatives are “free dance” formats – like Body Grove, Journey Dance and Chakra Dance. But these formats will frustrate someone who wants to learn to dance to no avail. It will frustrate someone who is a student by nature and not playful. And yes…not everyone is playful by nature. You can’t even tease it out of them. These people are intense and studious, and to try to take them out of their nature is shaming them. These formats often have 2-4 loosely interpreted moves per song with a lot of “free dance” sections. The overarching theme of the class is: it’s free, it’s play, it’s imagination, and you can’t get it wrong. But for the student that’s like there is a right and wrong way, like 2+2=4, you’ll never get them to come around. They’re right, there is a right way. They’re seeing the opposite side of the same coin. This is what they’re oriented to, and you can’t beat bash someone’s dance orientation, just like you can’t rehabilitate queer orientation to be straight, by shaming it through systems of belief. There are these dumb ideologies that we can “fix” someone or “mansplain” someone to our way of seeing, thinking and feeling. That’s downright foolish. People know what they like.
So where does that leave those students who want something different?
The answer is dance fitness on the 32 count.
The 32 count is continuous, seamless, and focuses on the beat. This way both the student and the instructor are not slaves to the song. Dancing on the 32 will teach an entire choreography without interruption from song to song, with set moves and combos – and A LOT of them. (Remember that hunger? There’s plenty on the plate for the hungry.) What a student learned 5 mins ago isn’t tossed away; they use it again and again. And by the end of a 30-min class, the student has a performance ready piece of repertoire!
That’s the sweat. That’s the workout.
This isn’t mindless, by the way. It’s not where you don’t pay attention.
This is drilling.
Drilling provides mental and muscle memory and gets people ready to perform work that is good enough to be seen.
SharQui Workout and Masala Bhangra. They’re some of the rare few that teach on the 32 count. This is not because students don’t love the format, it’s because for the instructor, it’s hard to teach. A much higher threshold for perfection must be held. Perfectionists thrive in these formats!
So, if you’re like this woman I helped, please listen to me loud and clear:
Feel no shame for your gargantuan appetite. You came to eat!
Feel no shame for wanting to be so good you want to perform.
You can even compete. Hello!!??? You’re allowed to compete!!! (Competition is shamed so much. How many times do you hear it’s unhealthy to compete? Shit, go compete until your heart and body is content. What is unhealthy is not to listen to your hungers, or feel shame for your nature and what you like!) You can do whatever you want with this large repertoire of movement that’s now in your body. It’s yours!
To be honest, I’ve done all kinds of movement formats. I myself vacillate between “no I just love movement,” to “no I just love dance.” When I find myself leaning towards one format rather than the other, it is my purpose for being in my body that is changing at the moment. But what gets me pulled back time and time again is the perfectionist in me. I don’t mean back, like I’ve taken a step back, I mean back into the nature of who I am and what it is like being in my body. Feeling home. Back home! I’ve learned to love my perfectionist self. People have told me it’s unhealthy to be a perfectionist, but the perfect way for me is being perfectly me! (People will tell you a lot of things, if you haven’t realized that yet…)
I don’t shame this woman in the community group either. She knows what she wants and what’s right for her. She doesn’t want to be a part of the “party”, or want to “play”. ‘Cuz learning is her “party”. Learning is her “play”. She doesn’t want to ignore the beats, because for her, there’s a right and wrong way – either on the beat or off it. She doesn’t want to throw away what she just learned, she wants to learn how to use it forward and integrate it NOW! She doesn’t want to move on to the next combo too quickly, not until she’s mastered the previous one.
Now if Zumba is your jam, or any other song specific format, please continue to enjoy your joy. There’s no Universal Joy in a dance fitness program. It’s all personal joy and consumerism….
But if you’re the type that pushes back on overarching messages of: “can’t get it wrong”, “play with”, and “it’s a party”, that’s totally cool too. There are formats out there for you.
SharQui anyone?
By for now,
Marisa
SharQui’s Director of Professional Development & Master Instructor