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Anna Sanchez
Mrs. Rogers
English IV
07 October 2012
Cultural Dancing
Generations go through many changes some know their entire cultural background and
ancestry while other generations know absolutely nothing about who they are or where they
originate from. This being the case with today’s generations people are uninformed about their
culture or other people’s culture. People could care less about others and their believes but this
could be changed if young people would participate in dance activities. This would allow people
to learn about their history, ancestry and cultural backgrounds. Being involved in a fun activity
such as dancing could help change behavioral issues with people. If anyone where to participate
in a dance class they would be entertained in something productive and not have time to get into
trouble. Not only that but in this activity people would be having fun while they are being
informed of other cultures.
Cultural dancing is learning while having fun. This activity works to helppeople express
themselves in new ways not involving language and verbal usage. Cultural dancing would help
people by teaching them to develop thinking, personal and interpersonal skill. People would be
learning to cooperate with one another and learn to trust others. This activityis something fun
where everyone fits in. However the only challenging thing would be if they are having trouble
with flexibility, agility, coordination, grace, sense of tempo or being able to feel the music move
through them(Herrick).

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One great fun activity that anyone could participate in could be the most popular thing
right now,Zumba dance. Zumba is a very fun activity that involves dancingto bicultural music,
so every time you work out, it will be to different music. Although Zumba is very popular right
now this was not always the case. When Columbian migrant Beto Perez came to Miami looking
for is big break in 1999. He was turned down by everyone he went to see about his program. No
one was giving him the chance. One day he approached entrepreneur Alberto Perlman and he
was given an opportunity to show Perlman what Zumba was. While Perez showed Mr. Perlman
the program, a crowd gathered wanting to know where they could go to sign up for this activity,
Perez was hired to start the Zumba program(Magazine).
When a person joins Zumba they will be introduced to a new way of dance involving
exercise. A person will have a great work out dancing to different Latin rhythms such as:
merengue, salsa, flamingo, samba, tango, reggae, cumbia, belly dancing, tribal and many more.
In this activity you will never repeat anything every time you go in for a session you have
something new to do. Starting from the warm up routine all the way down to cooling down after
this you’ll feel great. Zumba also provides many physical and mental health benefits and is
estimated that a person will lose between 50-100 calories if you keep going regularly(Magazine).
While doing Zumba you willexperience body toning and have a balance between co-ordination
for your heart and mind. This activity provides everyone a great whole body workout working
with everything from your head all the way down to your feet. Everyone would have a big
benefit because it doesn’t matter if you like to work out or not or if you’re a beginner all the way
to an advance learner zumba works to benefit everyone the same way. However,the creators
know that not everyone feels comfortablebeing with athletics or advanced learners. So
Zumbadecided to offer eight different classes from the mildest Zumba fitness which is like being

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at a party and just moving around while working out and although this is easy you’ll still leave
soar. And the toughest called Sentao which is choreographed to strengthen your core and set up
a cardio work out. Also Zumba is not only a physical body improvement it is also mentally
good for people. It produces endorphins (feel-good) hormones, which are released into the blood
stream after a person finishes with a dancing. This is benefitual to people suffering from
depression because it’ll help their stress levels lower(Bowling). This activity is estimated to have
you wanting to visit Latin places and wanting to learn so much about where this bicultural music
came from it also guarantees that you’ll have no clue you are participating in a different cultures
activity.
Since Zumba is mostly working out, cultural dancing not so much cultural dancing
teaches a person to move along with the music are learning its meanings. A person will be very
interested learning about key movements and of secret meanings their body language could have
while they express themselves in different ways.
For someone to be able to like cultural dance class they would have to be willing to
acknowledge other cultures, not be self-centered and want to learn about them. Therefor cultural
dance focuses on teaching people the meaning of certain dances, their originations and their
importance. In cultural dance a main focus would be to teach people that every dance is not the
same and that each symbolizes different things. This information would be giving depending on
the personal believe concerning certain types of music. Cultural dace will teach students that
back then every dance had a different meaning to their ancestors. This at many times ranked in
announcing the birth of someone important, the celebration of a marriage, announcing a war or
even trying to change the weather forecast.Everyone would learn that human creativity and
dance symbolisms had a great role in the meanings of music. By learning this they’ll learn that

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everything their ancestors did had a very special meaning to their music. This dance activity
includes teaching people of different dance origins. This includes learning about dance place of
birth, year/century it got started in and the kind of people that got the dances’ started.
This type of dance class is very unique and important because it will teach young people
of its importance in society and why it should be something all generations participate in.
Cultural dance should not be allowed to die because off all the things it has to teach. Like how
each ethical group belonged to a certain type of music which included its own dress code and
way of behavior that reinforced their acceptance in other communities. Not only this but it
would help today’s societies not forget about their family history and cultural background. This
would include people to be informed of their economic and political consequences that today’s
generations have gone through. Because today’s type of dance and music doesn’t have anything
to do with political consequences and back then it did. This would inform everyone about many
things and they would end up knowing about how many things in history got started just because
of a simple dance.
A very fun, interesting new dance that was lately introduced into the world of cultural
dance is Tribal. It is a mixture of jumping around and basically going around incircles. It was
introduces by Indian tribes but was unknown until about to years ago. When in Texas some
Latin Americans came up with a new catchy dance with a new type of techno music. Along with
introducing new music the dance came along with some strange new footwear, boots or better
known as BotasPicudas/ Tribaleras. The dance is not so popular in the American community
but they are huge in the Latin community. And as soon as more people hear about it more and
more people will want to be moving around to this new techno tribe dance(Treks).

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Dances come in different forms, depending on the type of music that comes along with
them. Therefore everyone will be introduced to many dances and music styles. Forms of dance
in cultural dance included ballet, modern jazz, and various ethical music groups. Also the class
would teach the young people to be able to tell the difference in every music. For instants many
people today mistake folk dance and it music with clog dancing. But they are to completely
different things because each teaches an individual something completely different. In this class
students would be presented to different types of dances some fast moving such as Oddisssi
classical, tap dance and the dance of the mimicking animals (Many times danced for a certain
type of hunting reason or to show how important an animal was for them.), deranges dance,
square dance and la danza Azteca(Graffon).
Something else that is nice about cultural dancing is that it is very healthy and benefits
students in so many ways. One way in which it benefits is that it helps build strong muscles and
bones. A person will gain strength from leaping, skipping, tumbling, running and basically just
moving around everywhere. Everyone in this class would have their bodies moving in various
ways. The dance will have you stretching, jumping and doing a lot of strength with your hands
giving you a lot of muscular strength(Herrick). Which you’ll continue to have as long as you
keep getting involved in this class, your muscles will get stronger and stronger. By doing all this
activities you won’t even notice that you’re learning about cultural dance. Not only will a person
have gained muscular strength but bone strength too. Due to the fact that this dance involves a
lot of joint related moves it helping them get stronger bones. Which is helpful because it teaches
of many things your ancestors did to stay strong and healthy leading to not getting hurt so easily.
Having all this benefits introduced to a person’s health there would be a gain in muscular and
bone stimulation. In this activity you would be learning about many organic and nutritional

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foods. Especially those foods your ancestors used to eat and have the opportunity to taste them
and if willing to change your diets as well.
Another health benefit of cultural dancing is that is reduces stress levels. It helpsan
individual not be so stressed out(Craddock). It does this by giving them something fun to do and
keep their minds off of anything that might be worrying them. It teaches a person that there can
never be something so bad a little dance and knowledge can’t help them get over their worries
for a little while, and change their sense of thought. The good thing about having this mental
health benefit is that. You will be able to stay in an average weight range. The reason of this
being the case is that when a person is too stressed out they tend to eat too much and not do
much moving around. While in cultural dance you won’t have time to think about your
problems and be moving around most of the time, leading to being in good health. When a
persongets involved in this activity they’ll have much physical and mental health beneficial
outcomes. This will help anyone from gaining a lot of excessive weight, reduce their stress
levels while increasing life satisfaction and prevent cardiac risks. So not only does cultural
dancing give you something fun and interesting to do but it also will give you historical
knowledge. Due to all the good benefits gained from Zumba and Cultural Dancing a person
should really think about joining one of this programs. So at least you can try and experiment
with something different and unique give Zumba or Cultural dance a chance you won’t regret it.