Imagine stepping into a vibrant gymnasium, pulsing with energy and filled with people ready to move, sweat, and smile. In this lively space, you might notice a diverse group: a young college student, a mother-to-be, a grandmother, a recent immigrant, and a senior gentleman. As the music starts and bodies begin to sway, something beautiful unfolds. Strangers become dance partners, sharing laughter, encouragement, and a celebration of movement. Differences in language, background, and beliefs melt away as everyone embraces vulnerability and connection. They leave not just having exercised, but with new friendships and a renewed appreciation for their bodies and the world around them.
Doesn’t this sound incredible? Welcome to the uplifting world of Zumba! Welcome to a place where movement is community, and every beat invites you to discover something deeper within yourself.
As we delve into the essence of Zumba, exploring its connection to womanism and a sense of the divine, allow yourself to feel the rhythm. Let’s dance, let’s dance, let’s dance! Resist the urge to stand on the sidelines or worry about perfect steps. If the spirit moves you, take a moment. Close your eyes, turn up your favorite music, and simply dance as if no one is watching.
Stepping onto the Dance Floor: Zumba as Empowerment
Ntozake Shange, in her powerful choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, proclaimed, “I found God in myself and I loved her.” This sentiment resonates deeply with my experience as a Zumba instructor. Each time I guide a class through a dance journey, I feel invigorated and inspired. Every time my students join me, pouring their energy into the workout, I sense a profound connection, a feeling akin to the divine.
For me, as a Black woman, Zumba is also an act of reclaiming my body. In a world that often objectifies, mistreats, and judges Black women based on harmful stereotypes, Zumba offers a space for embodied expression and self-acceptance. It allows me to celebrate my identity as a woman, as a Black person, and as someone who seeks deeper meaning in movement and connection. Zumba empowers me to invite others to explore and embrace their own unique journeys, to find supportive partners in this shared experience of joyful discovery. Zumba reveals the beauty and transformative power of womanism, extending its reach into fitness, dance, personal growth, and the very rhythm of life.
When I share my passion for Zumba, responses are often enthusiastic – “I love Zumba! Where do you teach?” However, some people seem surprised, perhaps expecting me to say “yoga.” For those less familiar, Zumba Fitness is a dynamic dance fitness workout rooted in Latin and global rhythms. It’s a calorie-burning, energy-boosting experience that incorporates elements of balance, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness. Zumba classes unite people in a shared experience of sweat and fun. Crucially, Zumba is accessible to everyone, regardless of size, shape, gender, nationality, religious background, or age. It blends diverse dance styles to ignite movement in participants’ bodies, and while choreography exists, improvisation is celebrated. Modifications are always welcome, ensuring everyone can participate comfortably.
Zumba is more than just exercise; it’s my sport, my womanist practice, my liberating and theological expression in motion. Drawing on Lincoln Harvey’s A Brief Theology of Sports, which considers sports as expressions of freedom within structure, Zumba operates under a single, liberating rule: move! Move in a way that feels authentic and right for your body. While “freedom within rules” might seem paradoxical, in Zumba, this single rule unlocks genuine embodied freedom. This freedom allows us to experience “reward achievement through varying degrees of physical effort, natural skill, and irreducible luck,” as Harvey describes a key aspect of sport.1 After a Zumba class, the reward is palpable: joy, energy, and the satisfaction of physical accomplishment. The simple imperative to move empowers me to embody and celebrate who I truly am.
The term “womanism” frequently arises when I speak about the transformative power of Zumba. My understanding of womanism is rooted in Alice Walker’s insightful definitions from her 1983 book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Walker describes a womanist as “a black feminist or feminist of color” who is “responsible,” “in charge,” and “serious.” A womanist is a lover of women and their strength, deeply committed to the “survival and wholeness of [an] entire people, male and female.” In essence, womanism champions the flourishing of all individuals, regardless of race or gender. Walker emphasizes that a womanist loves dance, music, the moon, and the spirit. “Womanist,” she famously states, “is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”2 Womanism, we can say, is a more passionate, potent, and focused expression of feminism.
At its heart, womanism honors the profound connection between body and life. I embody this commitment through Zumba. For me, this connection is deeply intertwined with the historical realities that have shaped my identity as a Black woman. I dance in the present, mindful of this complex past.
Remembering the Rhythms: Dance and Black History
Dance is not a foreign concept to Black women; it’s woven into the fabric of our history. As historian James Haskins explains, “music and dance had been an integral part of life back in Africa, associated with religion, farming, births, deaths, weddings, and other ceremonies. It had been a way to bring communities together.” However, during the horrific era of slavery, enslaved Africans were forced onto the decks of slave ships for brutal “exercise” after enduring inhumane conditions below deck. They were often compelled to “dance” under the lash of whips, forced to appear healthy for sale at slave markets. Haskins aptly terms this horrific practice “dancing the slaves.”3
This was dance devoid of freedom, joy, or dignity. Slavery stripped away the inherent joy of movement and violated the bodies and spirits of enslaved Africans. Theologian M. Shawn Copeland powerfully addresses this in her book Enfleshing Freedom: “Slavery rendered black women’s bodies objects of property, of production, of reproduction, of sexual violence.” In the centuries that followed, “black female bodies have continually been defiled, used, and discarded, quite literally, as refuse—simply because they are female and black, black and female.”4 Even today, media portrayals often perpetuate harmful stereotypes, depicting Black women as hypersexualized, aggressive, or incomplete. Black women are still frequently reduced to fragmented beings, valued for specific traits or body parts rather than recognized as whole, complex individuals. This dehumanization stems from the intersection of racism and sexism.
This fragmentation and objectification are not only imposed from external sources but can also manifest within the Black community itself. I once experienced a deeply hurtful situation where a Black woman complimented my appearance by comparing me favorably to a darker-skinned friend. She praised my lighter skin, smaller body, and “good” hair texture, implying these features made me more beautiful. Such comparisons and competitions among Black women, fueled by societal beauty standards, are damaging and unnecessary. They breed shame and insecurity about our hair, bodies, and complexions. It is painful to witness how societal pressures can pit Black women against each other.
Creating Our Own Steps: Zumba as Reclamation
Zumba is not a panacea for all the challenges Black women face, but it offers a powerful tool for reclaiming ownership of our bodies from societal dictates. We can embrace our bodies as our own, and even more profoundly, as bodies created imago dei – in the image of a free, creative, and magnificent Creator. Through Zumba, I’ve come to see my body as a site of theological reflection, and I encourage others to do the same. I embrace the words of M. Shawn Copeland, who writes, “The body is the medium through which the person as essential freedom achieves and realizes selfhood through communion with other embodied selves.” Zumba has enabled me to embrace my beautiful Blackness and to inspire others to embrace themselves as beings created imago dei. As Copeland eloquently states:
To declare “black is beautiful!” states a disregarded theological truth, nourishes and restores bruised interiority, prompts memory, encourages discovery and recovery, stimulates creativity and acknowledges and reverences the wholly Other. To assert, “beauty is black” exorcises the “ontological curse” that consigns the black body to the execrable, and claims ontological space: space to be, space to realize one’s humanity authentically. I am black and beautiful.5
Affirming one’s beauty requires a safe and supportive space. This space must be free from judgment and competition, allowing individuals to explore their identities authentically. In contrast to the competitive pressures that often surround Black women, Zumba cultivates such a space. It celebrates inherent beauty without comparison or judgment based on skin tone, body shape, or hair texture. In Zumba, everyone wins.
While Lincoln Harvey highlights the competitive element in many sports, Zumba’s non-competitive nature is precisely what unlocks its profound rewards. It is within a collaborative environment of mutual affirmation and movement that we can experience the true freedom and joy of embodiment. Unlike competitive sports, in Zumba, the more you engage with and uplift others, the greater your own enjoyment. Participants motivate each other to push harder, have more fun, sweat more intensely, and smile wider. We celebrate each other’s physical achievements with enthusiasm and style. Zumba transcends the competitive connotations often associated with sport, thriving instead on the playful, embodied freedom that structure can provide. Zumba is not a contest to be won, but a celebration to be joined. Let’s dance!
I’ve had countless conversations with Black women who initially felt hesitant about Zumba. They expressed feelings of shame about their bodies, often stemming from experiences of trauma, societal pressures, or simply feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands. Many of these women found their first Zumba experience surprisingly enjoyable and liberating. The more they participated, the more transformative it became. They shared stories of how Zumba boosted their self-esteem and helped them manage stress. They spoke of how Zumba aided in physical healing, navigating postpartum challenges, and overcoming depression. Several women described Zumba as a form of prayer, an embodied expression of gratitude for the incredible gift of their bodies.
These women were also pleasantly surprised by the invigorating atmosphere of Zumba, a community where individuals uplift and support each other with genuine joy, not rivalry. This, for me, is where the divine presence is evident: in women empowering each other to recognize the inherent beauty of their bodies, their imago dei nature. This is the “beloved community” that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned: people from all walks of life uniting to see the goodness and beauty in each other, amidst all our differences.6
In this shared space, I can confidently affirm the beauty of my Black body, and I believe everyone deserves to affirm the beauty of their own body. Zumba grants individuals the freedom to move as they feel, desire, and need. It allows us to declare that our bodies matter, to embrace both our joys and vulnerabilities, and to share this journey with others, so together we can say, “My natural hair is beautiful, my curves are beautiful, my unique features are beautiful – I am beautiful.” Let’s dance, let’s dance!
I will conclude as I begin every Zumba class:
Your bodies are all beautiful and amazing. Move them in whatever way feels right to you. There is no wrong way to Zumba as long as you keep moving. Don’t try to dance like me; dance like you. Your movement is exquisite and unique. Embrace it, and embrace your fellow dancers on this journey for the next hour. You deserve this time. Your body deserves this time. Let’s dance!
References
[1] Harvey, Lincoln. A Brief Theology of Sport. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014.
[2] Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1983.
[3] Haskins, James. Black Dance in America: A History through Its People. New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Junior, 1990.
[4] Copeland, M. Shawn. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2010.
[5] Copeland, M. Shawn. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2010.
[6] King, Martin Luther, Jr. Strength to Love. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1981.
