Apr 23, 2023

Loading player According to the Colombian dancer and choreographer Alberto “Beto” Pérez, “90 percent of people hate exercise” because they perceive it as “torture”, something that involves following a strict diet or putting in a lot of effort. Instead, he invented and made famous a form of gymnastics which, according to him, “is fun, it’s easy, it looks like a party and people forget it’s physical exercise”: zumba, which is practiced to the rhythm of Latin American pop music using and adapting typical aerobic movements. Today, zumba is a worldwide phenomenon, which according to the company founded by Pérez together with two other partners is routinely practiced by 15 million people in over 180 countries. Yet it was invented somewhat by chance, due to a carelessness by Pérez. Pérez was born in 1970 in Cali, in western Colombia, and has been teaching dance since he was a boy. In an interview given to BBC Newssaid he fell in love with US pop as a child, after watching Grease, the famous musical with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. “I used to put grease in my hair, put on my leather jacket and danced alone in the street; friends called me ‘Travolta’ », she says; she liked foreign music, but he also went to Latin American dance clubs. At 14, he had to start working to support his family after his mother was shot and injured while the police were trying to apprehend a robber. Among other things he was a bricklayer and an ice cream man, and two years later he found work as an aerobics teacher. Once recovered, his mother decided to move to the United States: instead he remained in Colombia to try and make a career in dance. Pérez usually taught to the rhythm of American pop music, with songs by Madonna or Michael Jackson. One day, however, by mistake he forgot at home the tape that he usually used: so, in order not to miss the lesson, he had to invent something. At that point he took from his car a cassette of Latin American songs that he had recorded from the radio and improvised: he told the people present that he had prepared a special lesson and he invented some aerobic movements that went to the rhythm of the salsa or merengue songs, two between the best known types of Caribbean dance. He liked it very much, he says, so he decided to continue teaching lessons using Latin American songs. The rest was word of mouth. The phenomenon grew quite quickly: “new people always arrived and long lines of people formed before each lesson” who wanted to try the new type of gymnastics, recalls Pérez. So in the nineties he moved to the Colombian capital Bogotá, where he continued to gather followers: mostly women, but not only. This was the beginning of zumba, which however was then called “rumba”, the Spanish word which, in addition to indicating the typical Cuban dance in many Latin American countries, is also synonymous with party. Thanks to her success, Pérez was also contacted by the Colombian pop star Shakira to devise the choreography of the videos of some of her songs. In 1999, Pérez moved to the United States, to Miami, but the early days were rather difficult, both because he didn’t speak English and because he didn’t have much money saved up. Even in that case, however, things changed after his first aerobics class to the rhythm of Latin American music, which according to him was a completely different type of physical activity from any other known and practiced in the United States at the time. Two years later, one of his students introduced him to her son and a friend, Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion, both Americans of Colombian origin. It was then that the three began to collaborate to try to expand the business. Pérez, Perlman and Aghion’s idea was to sell home exercise videos in which Pérez showed how to practice “zumba”, the invented term with which they had decided to call his aerobics: the problem is that they didn’t have too many means nor resources. However, they were able to use the fact that more and more people had become interested in becoming teachers themselves. In 2003 those interested had been 150 and the following year 700: today there are more than 100,000 zumba teachers worldwide. Some time later Pérez and the two partners also founded Zumba Fitness in Miami, a company that according to some estimates would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Today Zumba Fitness promotes the dissemination of the discipline and takes care of the official certification of the instructors, who must pass a paid qualification course and continue training in order to teach it. The company also organizes events attended by hundreds of people and sells sports clothing, but also videos, compilations and video games all designed for practicing Zumba. – Read also: The woman who made the samba a symbol of Brazilian culture #Zumba #invented #accident