Zumba Fitness

Zumba Fitness or the Zumba Program is a dance fitness program created by Colombian dancer and choreographer Alberto "Beto" Perez during the 1990s. Zumba involves dance and aerobic elements. Zumba's choreography incorporates hip-hop, soca, samba, salsa, merengue, mambo, martial arts, and some Bollywood and belly dance moves. Squats and lunges are also included. Zumba Fitness, an organization that sells Zumba videos and products, does not charge licensing fees to gyms or fitness centers. Approximately 14 million people take weekly Zumba classes in over 140,000 locations across more than 150 countries. In 1986, Perez forgot his tape of aerobics music for a class he was teaching. He took the tapes he had in his backpack – consisting of traditional salsa and merengue music – and improvised a class using this non-traditional aerobics music. After finding initial success in Colombia, he moved to the United States in 2001, where he teamed up with cofounder Alberto Perlman and a childhood friend, COO Alberto Aghion. The trio produced a demo reel, and the concept was discovered and licensed by a company called Fitness Quest to create a direct marketing campaign and a line of home videos. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.