Zumba Building Bridges and Community Circles
This meetup group includes Zumba Teachers, DJs, Zumba Fans and Community Circles Fans in the San Francisco Bay Area who are building and becoming a part of unique cultural groups centered around Fitness and Music.
It is sponsored by Building Bridges, a California non-profit organization that supports music, arts and fitness in our schools and community.
What is Zumba?
Zumba a registered trademark of Zumba Fitness LLC. Zumba teachers train and receive a license from the parent company to use the name “Zumba” as to teach their own cardio-fitness dance classes to Latin music. Zumba Fitness LLC also commissions new music to be created that has “Zumba” in the lyrics and that inspires movement and fun. Zumba has become a phenomena throughout the world because of the interest people have in participating in a party atmosphere while achieving their fitness goals at the same time. Zumba teachers are trained in non-verbal cues and how to make the movements simple enough for everyone to do. The fitness movements are inspired by partner dances like Salsa, tango, cumbia and samba, but don’t require anyone to know how to dance. The Zumba slogan is "Ditch the workout. Join the Party." Each Zumba instructor choreographs for their own classes and chooses their own music. But all classes include specific Zumba music and steps that everyone who does Zumba uses around the world.
Building Bridges supporting our teachers and communities...
Building Bridges, as a non-profit organization, supports the creation of new classes and events at schools and venues that support the community and give outlet to the creative talents of many. Building Bridges does not endorse any particular fitness program, but definitely supports and includes the teachers in our community who contribute their enthusiasm to helping build community circles through fitness, music and art activities.
What Fitness Sounds Like Projects
"What Fitness Sounds Like" is a Building Bridges Project. Building Bridges pays the rent and for an organizer's time to create events that will support an important community venue. As an example, the first meetup of this group was a Zumba Class organized by Karen Lile on January 20th, 2011 at Ashkenaz on a Thursday at 5:30pm. The first 19 people who attended that class came from this meetup group.
By the next week, others from the Ashkenaz community started to join and this class (which began as a meetup) has begun to have regulars who support it who range in age from their 20's to their 80's. The cultural and age diversity in the group reflect the venue and its position in the community.
What Fitness Sounds Like Programs
Each What Fitness Sounds Like Program is unique because it springs from the needs and personalities of the community members who gather at a particular venue. The character and flavor of each program reflects the people who inspired it.
What Fitness Sounds Like Programs, although unique at each venue are guided by a common philosophy. These are some of the concepts that guide those of us who help develop these programs:
- There are many answers and possibilities, not just one.
- Fitness is developing our wholeness of body, mind and personality, no matter what our age, skill, strength and mobility is. What we do with what we have can bring happiness to ourselves and others.
- Fitness includes self-expression through the movement, visual arts, music, ideas and the shared energy of ourselves and others.
- We don’t let the powerful self-expressions of others diminish our own self-expression.
- When comparison between ourselves and others happens, we choose to include everyone in the community circles we create so that no one person is diminished within the variety of self-expressions.
- There is room for a variety of body types, skill levels, opinions and talents.
- We support the development and inclusion of art, music and fitness in our community for people of every age and culture.
- We appreciate that recorded music gives us the ability to have constant access to our favorite music and to do fitness events to a variety of music gathered from all parts of the world. Whenever possible, we support our local musicians by attending and promoting live music at our community venues.
- We create and participate in free events to help the people develop new programs that reflect the personality of the community. Being enriched by the free events, we also find ways to contribute so that we can support the artists, musicians and teachers around us by donating to charitable causes, volunteering our time and paying for other classes that are available within our budget.
We welcome you to our group and appreciate your enthusiasm for Zumba, fitness and our community.
Zumba Instructor: Karen Lile. About Zumba Zumba is a cardio-fitness dance class to Latin music that is so fun, it feels like a party. That's why the slogan is "Ditch... Learn more
