Reflection Paper On Zumba

For my cultural experience, I decided to try dancing from a different culture. I ended up going to a Zumba class for the first time in my life. Zumba is a fitness dance class that mostly consist of Latin music and Latin-inspired choreography. They also incorporate Caribbean and African culture too but mostly Latin.
I chose Zumba for many reasons. First, I love to dance, dancing is my passion it is what makes me happy. Second, I hate working out but I need to and Zumba just seemed like a perfect way for me to get a workout in without feeling like I’m working out. Third, I’ve always been interested in Latin culture, but I never tried to anything. I also have plenty of friends who come from Latin countries. I’ve heard of some of their music when …show more content…
I thought that the class was going to have a very energetic and party-like feel. I also thought that most of the people who were going to be attending the class were women with somewhat of a Latin background and also women who were really good at dancing. This is one of the main reasons why so many people don’t want to attend a Zumba class because they might feel as if they will not fit in or that they will make a fool of themselves since they can’t dance or have very minimal dancing experience. To be honest, I also had these thoughts. Although I love to dance, I thought that I was going to the odd one out and that I wasn’t going to be able to dance as well as the rest of …show more content…
The class definitely had an energetic and party-like feel. It was really fun, we stayed active for the whole hour and a half with some water breaks in between. We danced to mostly Latin music but also danced to Caribbean, African, Hip-hop, and some Korean pop music. I learned that Zumba is not just for Latin music, but any style of music can be used as long as it keeps the class active and is easy to dance to. One of the things that I was wrong about was that the people who were in the class came from all sorts of cultural backgrounds. There were plenty of black women including myself, white women, and some Asian women. There weren’t very many women that looked like they had Latin backgrounds and there was barely any male participants in the class. The best part of the class was that the whole time I was dancing I felt beautiful. It felt as if I was pampering myself and filling myself with good energy and happiness. I could also tell that I was not just me, but so many of the women in class seem to feel the same way. Especially in the kind of world we live in today, where most women don’t feel good enough about themselves, this is something that could really help. Not only are you getting a workout but it’s good for your mental