Sunday, March 6, 2011

A Pavlovian moment: Zumba at the grill


As today was Saturday, I found myself at work stocking the beer cooler. My coworker had the tunes bumpin and as I straightened up to stock the shelf above my head my song came on. It’s what I will forever refer to as the “hotel-motel” song. It is actually called “Hotel Room Service” and is preformed by Pitbull. I just looked it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me17_uzP4Pk

Continuing, my shoulders shift, knees bend, my hips move to the groove and I realize I am having a Pavlovian experience. Shock! This is one of my favorite songs from Zumba. My shoulders, hips, and legs were moving to and setting up the steps I learned in my Tuesday Zumba class! I spent the next few hours going over everything I know of the Pavlov experiments, which is quite a lot thanks to the History Channel and History International, my fav. Invariably the domesticated silver fox slipped in there.
I really believe the removal of this song and one other has lead to the severe lessening of my opinion for Zumba. Yeah, I understand things have to get changed up, the instructors get bored, and the same moves over and over and over will not help your body get tone consistently. The strobe light was clutch, too.

The whole experience almost happened again with Shakira’s “She Wolf.” Fortunately, I was carrying boxes and spared myself the embarrassment of breaking into dance in front of customers, who probably would have loved it. I was in a different part of the building for “She Wolf” so it was a bit more of a surreal experience. I knew I knew something was going on, but wasn’t sure I knew how I knew. You know? The music was far more muted as I was not standing under a speaker this time. But then the refrain was there and I noted the response was significantly minor compared to the hotel-motel song. Here is a link to the “She Wolf” video. WARNING: It’s racy! Very racy! Even I was shocked! However, I will have you know most of her moves I have done in my yoga/palates/tai chi class. Strap some sexy heels on a gorgeous bod and it looks a bit different than a fully clothes goddess (myself) on a yoga mat sweating to death in a hot room full of others enjoying the torture. Just try this class and you will understand. You will also be able to dance similar to her:
I like “She Wolf” but not as much as whatever the other one is that Lee is forever asking me about at any point in time accept when it is on during Zumba. As my friend Mike will recall, I was a fan of the voluptuous Shakira before she stated singing in English and showing all of her bones for lack of curves. So I will repeat again, Lee, I have no idea which song it is but its not whatever you are trying to sing. And you are probably right, we did hear it in my car, along with all of her other songs. Let’s try again. Often.

I did bring to both her and my attention that the problem of the “which song is it anyway” is that we dance to a mix of a bunch of Shakira songs. Mike, you would still be impressed that I sang all the words in English to the Spanish version of  "Eyes Like Yours,” “Ojos Asi” !!!! Yes, I specifically put the “!!!” outside of the quotation marks. But that song is the full version.

Of course, DJ would not be surprised. And I am forever indebted to him for sending me the video of her “Whenever, Whereever.” It did not have the intended outcome, as it was revolutionary for me. And I loved the change! All of my roommates have cursed him for it as they have had to endure endless loops of play.

So to recap, Zumba is good, and I clearly don’t go out dancing enough if I break out awesome moves at work. A total waste.
June 6, 2010 at 12:56 pm

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