Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Zumba is the way it sits at the nexus of so many dominant trends. Like some great Zeitgeist cocktail, it is a frothy blend of Latin culture, social networking, globalization, weight consciousness, a feminizing society, solo entrepreneurship, and the maker's movement. It is tempting to call Zumba the quintessential 21st-century business. Given that it traffics in health, joy, and community, that is a hopeful sign for the species.
Alberto Perez makes slow progress across the hotel restaurant. Every few yards, Perez ("Beto," as he is universally known in the Zumba community) is swarmed by convention attendees eager to pose for pictures. Part Casanova and part Peter Pan, Perez wraps an arm around their shoulders, smoldering and grinning simultaneously.
Over dinner, discussion turns to the fitness concert set for the convention's opening night. The Zumba team has erected two stages, one on each side of a vast hall. The action will switch between them so no attendee gets stuck at the back. Perez, who will perform on both stages, had been agitating for a harness that would let him sail, Spider-Man-like, above the audience. "It is $35,000. I say, 'OK, I pay,' " says Perez in his pretty-good English. But after his partners consulted Lloyds of London, "I find out the insurance is like $300,000," he continues, assuming a crestfallen expression. "I say no. I cannot do it."
Most companies would plant such a charismatic showman brand-center. That Perez shares the spotlight with Zumba's citizen instructors testifies to the business's democratic ethos and marketing confidence. But if Beto is not the solo face of Zumba, he is indisputably its father.
As we eat, Perez relates his life story, a Hollywood-ready narrative of perseverance and pop culture. Growing up poor and fatherless in Colombia, he discovered dance at age 8 while watching the movie Grease. At 13, Perez and his friends were reenacting Michael Jackson's Thriller on the streets. His devout mother disapproved but came around after Perez showed her the scene from Footloose in which Kevin Bacon reads passages about dance from the Bible.
Many dramatic anecdotes follow: a shooting in a grocery, a chance meeting with a beautiful model who recruits Perez to teach dance to other beautiful models, triumph at a national lambada contest. By the mid-'90s, Perez was teaching dance and aerobics all over Bogotá. One day, he forgot his aerobics tape and resorted to what he had handy: salsa music recorded from the radio.
"Up until this moment, aerobics is aerobics and dancing is dancing. I would never think to combine," says Perez. "But this moment, I didn't have other options. I have to dance. And the reaction of the people: Wow! They loved it."
Calendar pages fly. Perez moved to the United States in 1999, at 29. In 2001, he was teaching in Miami, and among his adoring students was Alberto Perlman's mother. At the time, Perlman was recuperating from the demise of Spydre Labs, an Internet incubator that had launched nine companies, including a unified messaging service and an online community for expectant mothers. Aghion, a childhood friend, had worked at one of those ventures.
"So now we're both out of a job and looking for new things," recalls Perlman, taking up the story. "We would meet at Barnes & Noble and read biographies of entrepreneurs to see if we could find any ideas."
Perlman's mother suggested he talk to Perez about starting something together--possibly a gym. They arranged to meet at a Starbucks. Intrigued by Perez's life story, Perlman then sat in on a class at a nearby Olympia Gym. "There are 120 people, packed in like sardines," says Perlman. "They are screaming and smiling. No one looks tired. No one is showing any pain. I thought, We've got to do something with this."
