My favorite instructor so far is Yvonne Puckett. When I read on the Zumba Web site that this 73-year-old showbiz veteran had danced with Fred Astaire and with Marge and Gower Champion and had been in two Elvis Presley movies, I hied myself to Chelsea Piers to take her class.
In the soaring, bustling hangar that is the Chelsea Piers Sports Center, I pegged Miss Puckett at first sight: a warm pixieish Carol Burnett type in boysenberry cargo pants and black-sequined sneakers. I gushily introduced myself, and asked, “Do you think Fred Astaire would have embraced Zumba?” She said, “Oh, definitely, as all dancers would.”
I told her, “I’m trying to get some of the Astaire buoyancy and lightness into my Zumba work.” She smiled at me indulgently, as if I had told her that there were tiny people living inside my mailbox.
Unlike some of my other instructors, who use war and combat metaphors (“Punch it,” “Kick it out of here”) to fire up a class, Miss Puckett proved to be all unicorns and rainbows; she trilled, “Bee-you-tea-full” to us no less than five times during the hour. I wafted home on a cloud of lavender Tofutti.
