Dance Of The Month #1 January – Te Felicito

Wait, what? Now she’s dancing too??? Yes and No. I don’t know if it looks good when I really get going, but true to the motto “Why Be Moody, When You Can Shake That Booty?!” I don’t care what others think when I dance (unless Janet Jackson or Justin Timberlake share the dance floor with me…). Dancing has been proven to make you happy and that’s why I started Zumba with my favorite trainer at some point. It took me a little while to get the hang of the softer Latin moves in addition to my usual hard, edgy hip-hop-heavy moves, but I’m really enjoying Zumba now, which I never thought I would. But that’s also largely due to our nice, positive group. So Zumba has become my fun cardio, because I will NEVER understand how anyone would voluntarily put themselves on the stairmaster or crosstrainer for an hour instead of dancing to good music. Honestly, how many people look genuinely happy and motivated on these machines? Unless you have the goal of binging a Netflix series while getting your cardio in, I find cardio on machines incredibly boring and therefore mentally exhausting.

Since I can’t even get excited about a 10-minute warmup on the treadmill anymore, I had the great idea to dance instead. Learning a choreography is a cognitive challenge for me anyway, but once you’ve mastered it, you also get a little sense of accomplishment right away. So my tip to you, find a song on YouTube that you like and learn a choreography for it at your own pace as a warm-up dance. There are many Zumba choreographies for reggaeton and Latin pop, but hip-hop also works well. Shakira, the mother of all booty shakers, is undeniably right – Hips don’t lie! – so start moving your rusty hips. Since Shakira has a remarkable portfolio of hip-shaking songs, it’s only logical to start the series with a hit from her heartbreak trilogy, which is also my current warmup right now.

My Dance Of The Month is a choreography by Marlon Alves on the song “Te Felicito” that Shakira recorded with Rauw Alejandro. A really good mid- tempo song that I had to listen to a few times before I liked it, but now I even love it. Of the countless choreographies on YouTube, I like Marlon’s the best because it looks pretty cool and is totally doable to learn. Good luck rehearsing, I almost got it…