For this, I should sell tickets: thanks to “dance” workout DVDs, I can, in the privacy of my own living room, and the comfort of my own husband’s sweatpants, embarrass myself beyond belief and make my husband wet himself laughing. Why not share the joy with others for a small fee?

And as for privacy, the picture window in the living room means the whole neighborhood has a front-row seat to my fitness efforts. I really need to get those curtains back up.

I bought a “Dance Party” workout DVD. I thought it would spice up the boredom of traditional workout tapes. Bound to be better music, at any rate. “Spicing it up” is indeed what happened, and this gringo suburban mom of four wasn’t quite ready for it.

The first segment is Latin dancing, with salsa, mambo, and cha-cha. “Make it suavamente!” yells the Valley Girl instructor, a hipless wonder with no fat to be found on her tanned and toned body. “Fire up those hips!”

Easy for her to say. If I fired up my hips there would be an explosion. Fat is flammable, after all.

But more than that, there’s the whole Latin dance attitude that eludes me. The fluid movement, the sensuality. The flat-chested instructor actually tells us to do a bosom-stroking thing that I blush even to write about, and then to shimmy. I can’t shimmy. I won’t shimmy. I couldn’t shimmy to save my children from being hit by a train. Once I started I might never be able to stop. There just might be such a thing as perpetual motion.

The second segment is funk and hip-hop dancing. I thought I was funky, but I guess I’m not. Jennifer, the instructor, yells things like “Hit me!” and “Pop those hips!” She’s flanked by eight or nine “students” with an obviously wide range of fitness levels, the token cheerful heavy gal stuck in the back next to the token clumsy male, but even they can pop those hips and hit me with the best of them. Not I. Being funky evidently means doing a lot of bouncing up and down and then punching and kicking people. No wonder hip-hop clubs are so popular.

I also never realized fitness – nor choreography – were so technical, requiring one to master a new and complex vocabulary. “Slide it back to that mambo 3-2-1 groove, start with the single-single-double-slide shuffle then our hip crack. Pump it up and make it sassy!” Sassy? I’ll be lucky to remain standing. Readers may remember an earlier column of mine where I mention the illusion I’ve always held, that I’m a dancing queen waiting to be discovered. I’m sadly watching the ashes of that fantasy flutter away on the breeze.

And I’m not the only one watching. When my husband’s had enough entertainment for one night, he gets off the couch and heads upstairs, advising me to put a little more practice into the suavamente move, the one that comes straight out of a porn movie, and let him know when I’ve got it down. Him and the rest of the neighborhood males who are sitting in folding chairs on my front lawn, watching me practice my night moves. All I need now is a liquor license.

© 2006, Julianna Berry.