Four dollar Zumba got even better when I finished ten classes and took a class for free. That's right: Zero Dollar Zumba! Just one class, but free is free.
Every time I go, I learn a new dance, I get my sweat on, and I have a grand old time. Usually, it's a grand old time.
However, the instructor found a song that says something like, you wanna battle with me? Then the class divides in half and we dance at each other. You know, like in the movie Step Up but with less coordination and more oldness with worse style.
I don't actually mind the battle so much. I mind what it leads to. Usually a circle that gets us really close to each other. This is at the end of class. That means, most of us are sweaty, and some probably have a stench starting to build. The first time this happened, the instructor was like, It's okay! We all smell! Let's do this! And it was funny. But funny only once.
In addition to the let's get in a circle, it's been Let's find a partner and dance and then hold hands and then do a soul train and then maybe hold someone's hand again.
The reason S and I loved line dancing so much was that we didn't have to touch people. The no-touch dances work really well for people who don't appreciate strangers or germs or socially awkward people who know no boundaries. Sure line dancing had a few drawbacks--at the beach, there was a woman who would make us hold hands in a circle, but there were so many people there that we didn't actually have to do it if we opted out. Then there was that time the woman in Jean's class asked us if we would do Scottish folk dancing and we were like, do we have to touch people, and she was like, yes, and we were like, nope.
During the free class, I drank a lot of water, but I didn't want to stop Zumba-ing. Then I thought, okay during battle, I'll go to the bathroom. I waited for the battle song, and it never came. I was relieved that we didn't have to do all that, and then I'd just go to the bathroom during cooldown.
Except that the instructor decided to do a battle with a new song that doesn't even mention anything about battling. And it was too late for me to go to the bathroom without everyone noticing that I was leaving specifically because of battling. (I'm pretty sure no one would notice and no one would care, but this is me being me, here).
So I battled against and through until we switched sides. Then the instructor yelled, Find a partner--someone you DON'T ALREADY KNOW! Everyone kind of knows everyone except me already, and the woman I was standing near I'd already danced with so I kind of know her so she couldn't be my choice, and it wasn't an option anyway because was looking everywhere but in my direction. Since everyone knows everyone but me, you may think that everyone immediately bombarded me, jabbing each other to be my partner. Again, this is me we're talking about. Those things don't happen in my life.
Instead, people paired up with people they were near, and I could tell some people paired up with people they didn't really know, so that was good that some people were following directions. I was, you know, dancing by myself, but then a woman from the front came to the back. She wasn't there to dance with me. She was calling to another woman to come to the back with her and giving a reason for it, but the other woman wasn't listening, so she wound up kind of next to me. I said to her, It's so helpful you're in the front because I've been following you.
I shit you not. This was her answer: Oh, I, yeah, well, um, okay, well, thank you. And she kept dancing and I kept dancing, but we weren't really dancing with each other.
Then we all got in a circle really close and then we backed out into a wide circle and then we did that two more times until it was time for everyone to take a turn and dance in the middle of the circle.
I am not shy to dance in the middle of a circle. However, people were all trying to go at the same time, and I didn't want to awkwardly set foot in the circle when someone else was going, so I didn't dance in the circle. I danced my way to the bathroom as the circle broke up and they started cooling down.
With all this touching and battling and circling, Zumba is turning into something I enjoy for the first forty-five minutes and then dread for ten. With the price rising next year, I'm not sure how much longer I'll put in the effort to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment