Some Brits have taken a liking to dancing in the street to Mexican rhythms, inspired by a Mexican Zumba instructor.

A woman from Monterrey, Nuevo León, has achieved online fame after posting videos of her lockdown dance classes with her neighbors in Manchester, England.

While living with her English husband-to-be in the British city in the first half of 2020, Tania Morales got her neighbors dancing by teaching them moves to such Mexican classics as La Chona, a song by the norteña band Los Tucanes de Tijuana, and La Vaca, a merengue classic.

She recently posted videos of the socially-distanced classes – held in the street of the Manchester neighborhood where she was living – to her TikTok account and several have gone viral. One showing Morales teaching Mancunians dance moves to La Vaca had 1.3 million views at noon on Wednesday while one featuring La Chona had more than 700,000 views.

The regia, as female natives of Monterrey are known, explained in another TikTok video how she came to give classes to her neighbors in Manchester.

“My husband is English and last year, at the beginning of 2020, when he wasn’t yet my husband … I traveled to England and the plan was to be there for two weeks,” Morales said.

But the coronavirus pandemic started two days after she arrived and she ended up staying in Manchester for six months.

Morales explained that her mother-in-law likes to organize neighborhood events and proposed that she teach a Zumba class, a fitness program for which she is a certified instructor.

“My mother-in-law said to me: ‘Why we don’t we offer a Zumba class because everyone’s shut away,’” she said.

“… I don’t have to be asked to dance twice, do I? So every Sunday during the entire pandemic I gave Zumba classes. Obviously I put on La Chona, I put on La Bamba, I put everything on: salsa, merengue, bachata, even reggaeton,” Morales said. “… The truth is it was a very nice experience.”

Mexico News Daily