Background about me: I guess I'd consider myself an advanced exerciser who relies on high-intensity for building cardiovascular health but who also enjoys dancing from time to time. My dance background is ballet as a child, jazz as a young adult, and ballroom/partnered dancing (Latin, swing, Argentine tango) as a not-quite-as-young adult. I have no real training in African, modern, or bellydance.

Structure: Kirango is a 30-minute dance workout consisting of a warmup followed by six separate dance sections, each done to a different song. The sequence of dances is cha-cha, African, merengue, African, merengue, cha-cha, with the second cha-cha also serving as the cooldown. Each song is chaptered separately.

Choreography: The choreography is very simple to follow, insofar as the steps and arm movements are relatively basic and repetitive, with lots of back-and-forth, side-to-side motions. There was no fancy footwork, and no sweeping leg or arm motions; the workout takes very little space. The other movements are more subtle-- the hip-shaking and -swaying, the upper-body contractions, the pulsing. I know I didn't "get" all of these, but I still don't "get" them in all of my dance classes, or in Yoga Booty Ballet and Zumba.

"Feel-good factor": Many have commented on the upbeat mood of these workouts. For me, although I enjoyed it, I didn't get as much of a feeling of joy as I do with YBB and Zumba. That might be a function of my familiarity with the kinds of dance on which they're based, since I'm quite comfortable with ballet, jazz, and Latin dance, whereas I'm very much a novice at African dance. As I mentioned earlier, I still don't get all the moves in YBB and Zumba, but I feel freer and more comfortable making "mistakes" and improvising to them (again, possibly because I'm more familiar with their dance styles). But I also think that Kirango suffers for lack of rhythmic variety in the choreography; even in the cha-cha, I felt I was just moving back and forth, not dancing. Much of the time, it seemed like I was just stepping repeatedly from one leg to the other.

Another part of my perception might also come from the production values: I was disappointed that a workout filmed in the Caribbean was shot with a cloudy sky rather than the rich hues so often photographed for travel advertisements. The quality of the video also isn't that high; it appears to have been shot with a digital camera with inferior resolution, like Latin Kick. In contrast, Zumba overflows with color despite having an indoor set, and YBB boasts a variety of beautiful outdoor scenes throughout. I also found the music in Kirango rather quiet and uninspiring. While I could certainly hear the beat, I felt that I was executing moves because Kukuwa was telling me to do them, rather than dancing to the music. I actually don't typically notice the music much in my workout videos, so I was surprised to realize that I was missing that feeling of having the music move me instead of me moving to the music.

Intensity: While the workout did elevate my heartrate a little, I would rank this as less intense than Yoga Booty Ballet and both of the Zumba tapes. Again, it's possible that I would find it more intense if I were to engage my core muscles more for the subtler movements, but I'm uncertain whether this alone could make up the difference. This seems ironic since the merengues in Kirango had a tempo of 152 bpm, while the merengue in Zumba Beginner rated 126 bpm. I suspect that I may be adding more extra hip and core motion for Zumba in between beats, thereby getting more out of the workout.

Overall: I think the appeal of these workouts may rest on your personality and preference for various types of dance and movements. Those who already know they enjoy African and Caribbean dance may find them more rewarding. Others may want to watch the video clips very closely and even dance along to them to get a feel of how much they'd like 30-60 minutes' worth of these types of moves. They could be fun for a light workout.

Instructor Comments:

KickDancer