Goodbye Zumba, Hello Afrofit. If you haven’t heard of the new dance movement that’s been getting Zimbabwe on its feet (literally), I don’t know what couch you’ve been potato-ing on. More and more Zimbabweans have become health conscious, both in terms of the food they ingest and fitness. 

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Wesley Maraire and Ngonidzashe Edward have developed an African Dance and Wellness® enterprise that will not only get us active and moving, but will also help preserve Zimbabwean and African dance culture.

 The main motivation according to Maraire? “African dance is losing its soul. And so what better way to promote and preserve African dance styles than to teach it?” And what better way to get in shape this year than doing something fun? 

Maraire was intrigued by an article issued by UNESCO stating that Mbende Jerusarema dance is part of the protected heritage because it is losing its soul. Around that time, he also accidentally bumped into Edward who himself had been dreaming up of Afrofit (African Fitness) and working on a concept with Blessed Rukweza, a dance choreographer who choreographed the opening act of HIFA 2015.

 Maraire and Edward shared ideas about the whole dance movement and cultural traditional dance, and how it could be revived in modern Zimbabwean culture. With Maraire bringing in the business logistics and Edward the creativity and dance expertise, the two made the perfect team. 

African Dance and Wellness® has only been around for about 4 months. From August 2015 they had been doing promotional regional tours to parishes, community centres and the likes, to try and make Zimbabwe aware of Afrofit, and over 2000 people participated. 

The reception was always positive, and this motivated Maraire and Edward to invest more time and energy into it. They then started designing the dance program and working with physiotherapists and occupational therapists so that they could differentiate it from aerobics or Zumba or any other dance fitness program. “It was already different because it was Afrofit. We’re using cultural, traditional dance routines and movements, to come up with a fitness workout.” 

So just to be clear, African Dance and Wellness® is an entity or umbrella that features the aforementioned Afrofit, and also Tamba Africa Ensemble and Afrofeet. 

Afrofit is quite self explanatory. It is the dance and fitness program, the original product of African Dance and Wellness ®. Lessons are at Old Georgian Sports Club or St Giles at a monthly subscription fee of $20 per month with unlimited attendance. 

The Meikles family also donated a space at their Robert Mugabe store, which is currently under renovation and will serve as a cultural hub once complete. But besides the fitness sessions they currently offer, Afrofit is working on another way Zimbabweans can workout in the comfort of their homes: 

“We  are shooting a DVD right now, for the first workout that we put out; it’s called Tamba Tamba. We’re doing testimonials as well as gathering feedback because this is our 3rd month since we wee incorporated and so we want to shoot a DVD that we can then put to market in the coming months.” 

Tamba Africa Ensemble came about after having attempted to choreograph HIFA 2016 under the name of Afrofit. This attempt was unsuccessful due to the fact that fitness choreographing art just did not work with many people. 

“The fitness side would not fit with sort of the artistic side to everyone. So what we then did was take the nine guys we had, and instead of just having them do fitness, we explored more of their talents and decided to have a social enterprise and called it Tamba Africa Ensemble.” Maraire added. Tamba Africa would represent the performance side of the business for wedding performances and choreographies for instance. 

The naming of “Afrofeet” was in fact accidental. While embarking on one of their Heartbeat Projects where they go to schools and try to inspire high school students to live positive lives, St Ignatius misspelt “Afrofit” and deemed it AfroFEET instead.

 Luckily, Maraire and Edward had been looking for a name for this teaching side, and had finally found it. “What distinguishes African dance, particularly Southern African dance, is the center someone has when they’re dancing. So Afrofeet fits perfectly for Southern Africa.”  

Afrofeet is an educational program that incorporates African dance culture and learning for students. There are curricula for students from primary to high school which also try to incorporate the students’ syllabi. 

Maraire added, “We teach them new songs and we teach them how to greet in Shona, because some of those schools that we teach in, have students who don’t know a word of Shona, so it’s part of our programme in addition to learning the dance moves. 

“They learn new vocabulary and Shona culture and Shona dance culture. However,  we don’t limit it to just Shona. We’ve got Ndebele, Samba from Mozambique, West Africa as well.  We also put [other moves] there because it is important to learn from other cultures too.” 

With the realisation of the importance of leading a holistic, heathy lifestyle, the vision for African Dance and Wellness ® also incorporates a focus on wellness. 

Maraire continues, “Because the idea is to take Zimbabwe and the rest of the world to a very culturally conscious, healthy, quality, happy life, we need to incorporate the nutrition. Therefore we will have Afrofit, complimented by the nutrition side, so that we then teach people how to eat well and how to live well. And then we will have the performance side, being very closely aligned to the teaching side.”   

The African Dance and Wellness program employs students from Afrikera Dance Trust who have gone to school and had 3 years of intensive dance education. One example is Devante, last year’s Dreamstar winner, who dances Muchongo (a type of Zimbabwean dance) with some acrobatics. 

This initiative is also creating employment opportunities for dance students in Zimbabwe. African Dance and Wellness ® are even looking into possibly offering university degrees in dance in the future. 

We surely hope this initiative goes international, and that gyms all over the world will offer Afrofit alongside other dance fitness programs.