Zumba instructor helps library patrons dance to life

At 10:30 on a Friday morning, the song “Bailando” by Enrique Iglesias filled the community room in the Lemon Grove Library. Margarita Fregoso led a dozen people in a series of salsa steps across the room.

A regular Zumba instructor at Academy of Performing Arts in La Mesa, Fregoso turned what could have been a sleepy Friday morning at the library into a vigorous dance experience.

At 10:30 on a Friday morning, the song “Bailando” by Enrique Iglesias filled the community room in the Lemon Grove Library. Margarita Fregoso led a dozen people in a series of salsa steps across the room.

A regular Zumba instructor at Academy of Performing Arts in La Mesa, Fregoso turned what could have been a sleepy Friday morning at the library into a vigorous dance experience.

Abigail Morales, the assistant branch librarian for the Lemon Grove Library, peeked inside the room and smiled at Fregoso and her students.

“We are really happy to have her here at the library. She’s full of energy,” Morales said.

And the noise?

“It’s not a factor anymore these days. Libraries are not just a quiet place anymore, and there are rooms for quiet study for people who need them. Libraries are expanding their use. It’s all part of the Health and Wellness Initiative that the library can provide a place to provide for community for classes like these,” said Morales.

Fregoso admitted that she sometimes wonders if her classes are too loud for the library, but she has always been warmly welcomed.

“People exercise their brain as they read, and people exercise [their body] if they join a Zumba class here in the library.  Now our brain and body are both active, right? Well that’s how I see it,” Fregoso said.

Fregoso also has a regular Monday evening class at El Cajon Library, with nearly 20 people faithfully attending. Stacey Befort, 27, takes the bus from home to the library.

“I’m practically running off the bus and people I know will stop and want to talk to me. I just tell them I’m in a hurry, got to go to class,” said Befort, browsing through the shelves of books after the class.

“It’s a ‘10,’” Befort said about Zumba. “I love the challenge when she goes fast and she goes ‘round and ‘round.”

Fregoso can understand that zest for Zumba.

“It’s a fun exercise to do. You dance different rhythms without thinking if you are doing it right it wrong, without the instructor correcting the participants,” she said.

“You lose weight, it keeps you in shape and you are with a group of people giggling, smiling, dancing, and just having fun,” said Fregoso, who started teaching in 2012 at Curves and at a local church.

She now teaches not only at the El Cajon and Lemon Grove Libraries, but also Crunch Jamacha, Crunch Serra Mesa and occasionally at the Parkway Plaza Crunch.

It was five years ago when Fregoso first discovered Zumba and how much energy it gave her. “Exactly in November for Thanksgiving Day, in fact,” she said.

Fregoso had gone with her family to Tijuana. The sister-in-law whom they visited invited her to a fun class, a dance class with salsa, reggae ton, merengue, and samba.

“I loved it. The instructor made the class so fun and easy and smiling it was like a party.  Since that moment, I started practicing Zumba at home, watching videos in YouTube because I couldn’t afford to enroll in a gym or a studio to take a class. So I practiced every day at home,” she said.

Doing Zumba, people learn dance steps like salsa, merengue, cumbia, tango and even a little belly dance.

Fregoso always learns more routines that she can share with people in her classes.

A faithful following of about 20 students drops in to Fregoso’s Zumba class at 6 p.m. on Monday nights in the El Cajon Library Community Room. The next Zumba classes by Fregoso at the Lemon Grove Library will take place December 5 and 19 at 10:30 a.m. At the El Cajon Library, she teaches Zumba every Monday evening at 6 p.m.