Thread: where Zumba and bellydance collide

Over on the Weight Watchers thread Zumba has been under discussion. In some Zumba classes, participants are introduced to "bellydancing." There has been much wondering about just what that is, so... I found a video!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkNKQgPWeHQ"]Zumba Bellydance[/ame]

Now, I assure you that you have not lived until you've seen undulations in a wide straddle stance, so take a look!

And here is another example:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjssgnMnpu0"]Zumba bellydance[/ame]

Now. I had a rather bad Zumba experience myself. I know lots of people have good Zumba instructors who actually know how to safely lead fitness classes.

However -- in case you run into the members of the GP who are under the impression that what they learned in Zumba represents bellydance... now you know what they are talking about, and you might want to put your polite educator hat on.

Hehe, thanks for the laugh TigerB, I needed it. My instructor has been fussing at me this week for my sucky undulations, at least they don't look like that (i hope not anyway)

My boyfriend has a dear sweet neighbor lady who is quite a Zumba fan. She is always trying to convince me that she has learned all there is to know about belly dance through Zumba. She finally got me up to dance with her at a party, and we danced and afterwards she turned to me and said.

" You know, I don't think you're doing any of it right."

I just about died. hahaha.

LMAO!!! okay, I am obviously a bellydancer, and I think after those videos a bit embarassed to say a Zumba instructor as well. I haven't taken the 2nd certification (where instructors learn samba, tango, flamenco and Middle Eastern) so I'm not sure how it is taught, however, I will say the DVD's that I have gotten that show chorography were not bad and were pretty good, for what it is, of course it was bellydance "fusion".

Being a bellydancer, how can I not incorporate some bellydance into my class. I always have students after class ask/say something that implies that they think I am a professional bellydancer. so I think generally most (not all) understand the difference, at least where I am from.

The thing with Zumba that I like and dislike, is that as an instructor you do not actually teach. The chorography is suppose to be designed where by the 2nd time you hear the chorus you know what steps are coming up; there's no actually teaching, as if you were at a dance studio learning salsa.

I've had students ask me to break down the moves, esp bellydance moves.

One of the things that always made me feel weird in Zumba was that so many moves were done in that wide legged stance with bent knees. I think the idea is to work your thighs, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making a lot of things look raunchy. It would kill me to have to to ommis in that position - for heaven's sake, it's exactly the opposite of what I ask my students to do in my classes.

Hm... Our Zumba countermeasures are Bollywood dance, glad we have that option!

Originally Posted by laura 2

One of the things that always made me feel weird in Zumba was that so many moves were done in that wide legged stance with bent knees. I think the idea is to work your thighs, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making a lot of things look raunchy. It would kill me to have to to ommis in that position - for heaven's sake, it's exactly the opposite of what I ask my students to do in my classes.

My Zumba instructor loves these, I just go with it. It's my one hour a week when I don't have to think about trying to have perfect technique! The "bellydance" routines make me laugh a little - could they not have found an actual bellydancer to help with them? - but I still enjoy them. Yes, even the Shakira one

Judging only from those two videos, I would make an excellent zumba instructor - I can flail in perfect time to any music you give me!

In Zumba, the bellydance they are doing is a watered down "fitness" version. I teach Zumba and I educate my students that this is not "real" belly dance and I explain why. Zumba is a great fun workout designed for the masses. Try it, with an open mind! XOXO, Namira

That certainly was an interesting fusion of Latin, African, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Southeast Asian dance. I particularly liked the editing in the second video. Now I know what a hip lift would look like if the 1978 Purina Cat Chow chow-chow-chow cat belly danced.

Oh man! Those are awful. I'm gonna x-post from another thread...

I am an AFAA certified instructcor and I teach a Zumba class. When I took the training I was appalled at what passed for BD in the "bellydance" track ( pretty much everything you see up there...I'm pretty sure the second video is EXACTLY the chorey we learned in our certification. I could barely get through it without a sneer on my face). My friend leaned over and said " You better start teaching class so you can fix this!!" LOL

As long as 70% of the music/style in your class is Latin, as an instructor you are free to use your own music & choreography. That's why the content & quality of a live Zumba class varies from person to person. I may be biased but I think my friend and I teach pretty good ones ( we pre-cue, we have fun content...mine is smoother & more dance-y, which simply reflects our personalities ;))

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only BDer who teaches Zumba on these boards. My class mix is in fact, mostly Latin (mostly riffs..better ones I hope...on the choreography DVDs we subscribe to as certified instructors) with my own original "Bollywood block" and one shimmy drill to a drum solo thrown in. I tell them this is in lieu of push-ups & sit-ups & they can consider it strength training LOL. SaNoorah, I guess now that Zumba is a bit more organised there are more levels of certification... I got all the dance styles in one day of training.

I assure you that they are quite impressed with the amount of training it would take them to become "real bellydancers"! and they learn a lil something about how BD-ers shake it as opposed to hip-hop/Brazilian/African.

Believe me, when I see what passes for "world dance" chorey on some of these training DVDs, I KNOW I am doing us a favour while being quite realistic about the difference btw a dance cardio class & proper beginner class ( which I also teach outside the gym). Some of the chorey I find quite stuck in a weird old-skool notion of what constitutes dance fitness ( the weird wide-stance, lots of knee-ups etc). That's not what my members get!

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by Namiradance

In Zumba, the bellydance they are doing is a watered down "fitness" version. I teach Zumba and I educate my students that this is not "real" belly dance and I explain why. Zumba is a great fun workout designed for the masses. Try it, with an open mind! XOXO, Namira

Zumba is indeed a great, fun workout. However, the Zumba organization itself does not enforce any fitness-teaching credentials on instructors, and instructors may be all over the map on how and what they teach. (Some of them may describe the above moves as "bellydance" and some may describe them accurately.)

Therefore, if you try Zumba without prior knowledge or recommendation of a particular instructor, your mileage may vary widely. As I mentioned on the other thread, my instructor did not know what a warm-up was. She also had us doing very fast turns on a sticky gym floor in athletic shoes. My knees couldn't take it.

So if you like latin music and need cardio, try Zumba. If you get a bad instructor but still like the basic tenets of the class, try to change teachers.

I am curious... not yellow...I wonder what Salsa & other Latino dancers think of those moves done in Zumba classes? I imagine they must be as cringe-worthy as the majority of belly dance moves done? Or maybe "real" Salsa dancers take up Zumba teaching?
Input? Someone check out some Salsa boards? Maybe I will later...

I agree with the above, anyone can become a Zumba instructor with or without a group certification, (I'm currently working on getting mine, actually I was suppose to sit for it today but it was rescheduled). and as Shimarella said, in a Zumba class 70% needs to be "authentic" (could be merengue, salsa, cumbia, reggaeton, belly dance, flamenco, tango, samba); and the other 30% could be fun, like using a song by Pitbull.

I've been lucky enough that each class I've gone to the Zumba instructor has been decent and has done a proper warm-up and workout and cool down. When there are new people in my class I try to make it a point to quickly run down what Zumba is so they do not get the wrong idea. But I agree when I have taken a Zumba class and another instructor throws in BD I usually cringe/laugh and I end up doing the moves in "perfect" BD form instead of Zumba form.

LiesaB, I agree with you 100%, I had a woman in my class, and luckily, she has become somewhat of a friend through me trainer her, that every time I did my salsa song, she'd do other steps, she finally explained to me that she's been taking salsa for years so the steps I'm doing, although correct, were too basic for her. It's interesting b/c you never know who really is taking your class and what level of dance if any, anyone has. I also find it interesting being an instructor versus being a personal trainer. As a trainer you are always looking for the correct form of your client, and when teaching a class, you can't do that for everyone b/c the class isn't designed for one-on-one, it's even worse when you are teaching some type of cardio class rather than a sculpting class.

A newcomer took a drop-in class from me last year. Athletic, fit, trouble staying on the beat, somewhat clumsy look; kinda typical workout type newcomer. Nice lady. After class, she told me she needed to learn Bellydance moves because she was a certified Zumba instructor. I said, "So would you like to sign up for whole session now?" Oh no she says, that's all I need. She did say it was harder than she thought. I gave her my polite lecture on why her concept of learning Bellydance moves was ... not good.
...Her classes are packed.
I know, it's the type of reason some teachers don't ever do drop-in classes... I love my drop-in class for a lot of reasons; I like the flexibility; I have other classes at a college that are prepay per semester & completely inflexible. Anyway, 'nother thread.

Oh, and I think the idea of Zumba is fantastic - exercise class - fun, upbeat, world music, fast, gotta catch on, no over-'splaining (eliminates overanalyzing stuff)...I can see why it has become so popular. I keep meaning to try it myself!

..l;, That first video where they try undulating while in a wide squat like stance is hilarious!

A local fitness center recently had a free zumba class to get the community interested in membership. I went and it was a nice fun workout... mostly pop, hip hop, and salsa inspired moves. The bits of bollywood they had were fairly similar to real bollywood dance and the "middle eastern dance" was just a bit of shimmying in circles. It wasn't too bad. At least they didn't have everyone attempting horrible arms, non-belly dance moves, or bad posture like in the videos. More time was spent on the latin dances anyway. Still, it's annoying that the GP would get that sort of impression of belly dance from zumba, and that the zumba classes get many many more students than our little belly dance facility.

so, this discussion is going on, and I just get a text from another Zumba instructor who I've become friendly with and asks if I'm coming to her class tonight, I can't, so she says/asks that we should get together soon (which is always nice to bounce ideas off wach other); she would love for me to give her some pointers on bellydancing moves!

Well for dance fitness, because you have to water down the moves anyway for safety & accessiblity reasons, you will hardly ever get authentic or advanced moves. When I took a kickboxing cert & with my AFAA GF class the trainers were quite clear that group fitness required some generalised moves for safety.

Zumba is popular everywhere but particularly where I live because of the Latino culture. I'm not a big ballroom dance expert but Zumba is supposed to be a party anyway & latin dances are not the purview of professional/competitive salseras, its social dance culture. There's also partner work that you cant incorporate into a gym class. So I'm quite clear on what is reasonable to expect from a dance fitness experience, both to give and to get. I think that if Zumba's latin dance moves were not sufficiently authentic, my ladies would vote with their feet.

Not sure how willing I'd be to share random bellydance moves with another instructor not experienced with the form or who I might not trust to make a good choreography. But that's just my control issues. I'd rather teach them my chorey and hope they give me credit sometime ;)

Originally Posted by shimarella

I think that if Zumba's latin dance moves were not sufficiently authentic, my ladies would vote with their feet.

Not sure how willing I'd be to share random bellydance moves with another instructor not experienced with the form or who I might not trust to make a good choreography. But that's just my control issues. I'd rather teach them my chorey and hope they give me credit sometime ;)

LOL!!! ..l;,..l;, and I also agree with the moves wheather in a dance fitness class or kickboxing, need to be watered down.

I agree, not too sure how I feel. Also, in my area, right now, this is giving me my "edge", it's the something that makes me different, well except for my other BD friend who also taches Zumba

it makes it even more terrifying that the "oh my too! i use fit tv's shimmy" response to "im a bellydancer" has been being replaced by "oh we did bellydance in zumba last week"
thank you for sharing, now i can say for certain that they are confused.
i think im gonna cry..... : (

owsch...Now I understand....a collegue asked me to give a workshop bellydance for zumba teachers, I didn't understand why. Now I do....it will be a hard job I thing ;-)

Originally Posted by Mahsima

My boyfriend has a dear sweet neighbor lady who is quite a Zumba fan. She is always trying to convince me that she has learned all there is to know about belly dance through Zumba. She finally got me up to dance with her at a party, and we danced and afterwards she turned to me and said.

" You know, I don't think you're doing any of it right."

I just about died. hahaha.

Yup, I think I would've dropped dead! What a laugh!!

I know of a Zumba instructor who admits to having learned her bellydance moves "online" and from DVDs. If you are just tossing a few moves into your Zumba class, thats one thing. But she is now offering a Bellydance Fitness Masterclass. . . and that makes me a tad bit uneasy.

Originally Posted by NazirahDances

I know of a Zumba instructor who admits to having learned her bellydance moves "online" and from DVDs. If you are just tossing a few moves into your Zumba class, thats one thing. But she is now offering a Bellydance Fitness Masterclass. . . and that makes me a tad bit uneasy.

..cr.:.p::.p::.p::


Deborah

Originally Posted by ssille

owsch...Now I understand....a collegue asked me to give a workshop bellydance for zumba teachers, I didn't understand why. Now I do....it will be a hard job I thing ;-)

but perhaps worth it when they see the real thing? ^_~

i've been very tempted after seeing this to take a marker to the zumba flyers that have listed in purple ink on a black background "salsa, hip hop, bellydance," etc they have bellydance printed in the middle, so i bet i could black it out and you'd never know it was there......... :zillevil:

Oh, but you should see the hipscarves! In these parts I've heard them referred to as Zumba skirts...and the instructor in the first video? That's how a lot of ladies wear them.

I've also learned my fancy hipscarves do not hold up as well to Zumba as the "crappy" chiffon scarves - those "crappy" ones keep the coins!

But it's fun, and in my area I haven't really heard my instructors saying "this is bellydance" or even "these are bellydance moves", they say "this is the 'bellydance' song" (usually Shakira).

However, most of the arm movements in the "bellydance" songs make me think of this:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRT5f_DbBOQ]YouTube - Bride and Prejudice - Cobra Dance[/ame]

Originally Posted by Mahsima

My boyfriend has a dear sweet neighbor lady who is quite a Zumba fan. She is always trying to convince me that she has learned all there is to know about belly dance through Zumba. She finally got me up to dance with her at a party, and we danced and afterwards she turned to me and said.

" You know, I don't think you're doing any of it right."

I just about died. hahaha.

damn! what did u say to her?

I just smiled and said something like "Well...I suppose everyone is entitled to an opinion, I spend many hours a day studying and practicing, but I am glad to know your Zumba class is so thorough.."