All she wants to do is dance, dance.

Thursday night and I’m standing in a brightly-lit aerobics room with approximately 20 other women. We’re waiting for our instructor, Ebony. Three Latina women huddle to the left of me, giggling and speaking Spanish like machine gun rounds. Two lanky, Russian teenagers slouch towards the back of the room whispering to each other. An Asian grandmother stretches her birdlike shoulder blades, raising her stick thin arms above her head. The middle-aged woman to my right stares at a corner of the ceiling and bounces nervously on the balls of her feet. There are more, but these are the ones that make an impression while I stretch my quads, flex my calves, and settle into my body.

Here’s the thing: I love to dance. Unfortunately I’m terrible at it. Like, legitimately bad. There’s some strange misfiring circuitry between my arms and my legs. My lower back gets stiff and achy when I wobble around too long. My go-to move is a half squat with fist pumping; lots of shoulder and arm. My legs are essentially just weight-bearing pillars keeping me upright.

Hips? No. Grinding? Uh, nope. Twerk? Oh, you’re funny.

But for me a dance party is sweaty group therapy. I burrow my way to the center of the dance floor like wiggling through a human meat tunnel. Benefits of The Middle include:

1) Using the proximity of other humans to support yourself in case of tequila.

2) 360 degrees of potential escape routes in case of creeper.

3) People. There are so many people and you don’t have to look at, or talk to them, or even acknowledge they exist. You just throw yourself in there and jump around relatively rhythmically until you can’t remember the stress or celebration that dragged you in.

Rough day at work? Go dancing. Found $5 on the street? Dancing. Just broke up with your girlfriend? Dance it out, bitch. Worried your friends met someone more stylish and funnier than you and you’re destined to die alone? Dance. Just saw your favorite author read an excerpt from his new book and you’re so happy you could implode? Go dancing, get run over by a truck, and have your car towed.

I’ve danced in plenty of embarrassing ways. For example, the night ULOL walked in on me trying to recreate Alex Vega’s Call Your Girlfriend dance video. Or the week KJ and I tried to learn this quirky little number. But for years I’ve stalwartly refused to consider Zumba a legitimate form of exercise.

Stereotypically, Zumba conjures images of middle-aged women who sip green tea and shop at Whole Foods. I imagined stay-at-home mothers with spray tans bouncing around to techno beats, while mentally cataloguing the top 100 uses for hemp milk. I’m not saying I’m opposed to the suburbs, or green tea, or spray tanning! Furthermore none of those things are even related to Zumba. But the idea of choreographed group dancing made me feel silly and uncomfortable.

Fifteen minutes into class we’re sweat-soaked and grinning, applauding after each song. Clapping for each other, clapping for ourselves. Ebony tests our endurance with a song that requires 4 minutes of squat and lunge variations. Afterwards we shake out our screaming legs, smiling. Nodding commiserating nods at each other. The next song starts, the transformation begins. Nervous energy dissipates as this roomful of women take ownership of their bodies. The tango starts slow, 1-2-3-4, out-in-out-in. The beat drops us into double time, the song evolving into a hip hop frankensong mashup. Hips shed rigidity, shimmies come more naturally. We are a room of fluidity, embodying round and full-bodied motion. The Asian grandmother rolls her hips in broad figure eights. The nervous middle-aged woman cocks one hip and pop-pop-pops to the beat. This is a safe space. For 60 minutes, nobody wears their body like an apology.  

I’m not the only one who had a warped perception of Zumba. I told my friend I was starting and she responded “Oh. I think the woman I babysit for does that. Is that a thing people our age do?” The answer: yes. I wish everyone would. Dancing without expectation or reservation, the energy and freedom are intoxicating. Plus, you know. It teaches you to drop it, drop it low on the dance flo’.

Keep it real, kittens.

-b