Zumba italiano

Ever since I got to Fidenza I've been intending to get to a zumba class. I am a regular at Sunday morning zumba in El Cerrito; it's a lot of sweaty exercise and  also a lot of fun, because I love jumping around to the class's Latin-pop music. Zumba is one way I burn off some of the extra wine and pasta that keep my life enjoyable, and it's also a real mood enhancer. I don't know who or where these people are, but their video gives you a little of the flavor. 

When we got to Fidenza three months ago I didn't jump right on my Italian zumba project because soon after arriving here we went to New York, and then I spent a few days in London, and then my exercise-seeking energies went into getting my aqua aerobics life organized. Keep in mind that doing anything here like finding a class or signing up at a gym is a big project, because (a) they seem to do most things differently than I'm used to and (b) they do everything in Italian. So it's easy to feel that maybe I should put this off a day or two.

Thus we were already well into June when I finally got around to scoping out where zumba classes were offered in my neighborhood. Happily there's a gym only a third of a mile away, next door to the supermarket, that has zumba on Wednesday evenings. Their web site offered monthly passes, though, and I only wanted to attend a few times before I'd be heading back to California. It took me another week or two to get up my courage (and assemble the necessary vocabulary) to go to the gym and ask if they allowed drop-ins. I was assured that they did, and I wrote in the next Wednesday's class on my calendar.

When the day arrived I squeezed into my spandex capris and a T-shirt and headed over to the class. The full heat wave hadn't hit yet, but it was already plenty warm and I didn't even think of putting on a jacket. But as I walked down our street I was suddenly aware that people were giving me looks as I passed by, of the "what the hell is she wearing?" variety. And it occurred to me only then that in Fidenza you don't see many people strolling around in the kind of workout gear that you actually work out in, especially not women in the "nonna" (grandma) age group.

I scuttled shame-faced to the gym, only to be told by the young lady behind the desk that, for reasons unknown (or possibly just not understood), there would be no class that night. And so my spandex capris and I had to endure walking home  five minutes through the same gauntlet of mildly disapproving people. 

The following Wednesday was the day we went to Pontremoli, and I didn't get back to Fidenza in time for the class. The week after that we had our successive wave of visiting friends and relatives; I spent that Wednesday evening eating mortadella ravioli and fried salt cod in a local eatery with my friend Jean and her niece Kiki.

The whole time we were running around with company I kept telling myself that I still had several more weeks before we'd be flying back to California. Only after everyone left and the laundry was done did I allow myself to realize that in fact we were leaving in just one week. If I was going to get to an Italian zumba class, it was now or--well, not never, but sometime in the autumn. .

So a few days ago, on Wednesday evening, despite the godawful heat, I got back into my zumba togs, threw a skirt over my ensemble to placate my critical neighbors, and headed back to the gym. The gal at the front desk told me the zumba class had already started 40 minutes before, which gave me a quick burst of cardio activity. But then she realized that this earlier class was not regular zumba, but something called "Zumba Strong." She invited me to go take a look while I waited for the later, less intensive class. Less intensive than zumba?

The gym held about thirty women and one man and had a temperature of about a thousand degrees. Just looking in the door made me sweat. They were all young and fit and, at that moment, doing burpees--jump up, go down into a plank, do a push-up, repeat--with the addition of a two-legged donkey kick into the air after the push-up. And they were doing dozens of them, before moving on to other, equally impossible moves. I silently gave thanks that I hadn't accidentally turned up for this class, which would certainly have killed me.

Eventually they were done and the room emptied out. Meanwhile the instructor for the vanilla zumba class arrived, and it was none other than Ilaria, the same blonde Amazon who teaches aqua aerobics. At least there would be one friendly face in the room.

And perhaps only one, because it looked like she and I were the entirety of the class. I snuck a photo.

"Usually there are a lot of people," Ilaria said. But maybe no one was coming because it was not only horribly hot, but a thunderstorm was starting outside. I probably would have stayed home myself if I hadn't been up against a deadline.

By 7:30, our start time, two more women had turned up and the class got underway. I wish I had the dance vocabulary to explain how Italian zumba differs from Californian--or at least how Ilaria's differs from that of my El Cerrito instructors. For one thing, most of the music seemed to be in Italian, rather than Spanish, insofar as I could pay attention to such details while hopping around and trying to figure out which foot went where. For another, Ilaria's style seemed to me to be a bit less liquid, a bit more martial. Perhaps it was the lingering influence of the beasts of Zumba Strong.

Anyway, we danced and sweated and had a great time, despite the awkward moment when another woman and I ran into each other and it appeared I might have broken her ankle. (She turned out to be okay.)

Afterwards we took a selfie together. Ilaria's the one on the left.

(The third member of the class isn't there because she wears a hijab when she's not dancing in an all-woman setting and didn't want to be photographed bare=headed. She's also the one I inadvertently crashed into, but I don't think she holds it against me.)

There are so many things I put on my to-do list when I got here but that I still haven't gotten to. I wanted to make pig liver with caul fat, but the market doesn't seem to be selling it now. (Maybe it's a spring dish?) I still haven't found my way to the "Rover Joe" Museum or the one dedicated to the author of the Don Camillo novels. I haven't yet gone into the bingo palace or dress shop downstairs or the "Liar's Cellar," a bar near the Duomo whose looks intrigue me.

But at least I've made it to one zumba class, and I have the photo to prove it.