The Schenectady Jewish Community Center partnered with MVP Health Care to attempt to set a record for the largest Bokwa class, through Guinness World Records.
Although it’s popular in Europe, many Americans have never heard of the fitness dance crazy that is Bokwa. The style originated from South Africa. Dancers draw letters and numbers with their feet to the rhythms of house, world and hip-hop music.
The Schenectady JCC offers Bokwa classes every Tuesday at 2 p.m. as a part of its Silver Sneakers program with MVP Health Care, which strives to help older adults stay active.
Omoye Cooper, the instructor for the class, is a master teacher of African dance and her expertise showed as she led everyone in Bokwa on Wednesday.
“We’ve been trying to break a world record for awhile,” said Mark Weintraub, the executive director of the Schenectady JCC.
For Camp Chaverim, one of the summer programs at the Schenectady JCC, Weintraub and program director Andrew Katz are continually attempting to come up with fun activities for the campers.
“It’s camp! The whole idea of camp is to do crazy things,” Weintraub said.
In years past, Camp Chaverim tried to break the world record for the the largest group of people rolling tires. But they were just short of the number they needed.
Rather than break a world record, the kids of Camp Chaverim joined with community members to set one on Wednesday.
According to Weintraub, there is currently no record for the world’s largest Bokwa class. However, Guinness requires at least 250 people to participate to set the record. There also has to be several formats of proof documenting the event.
“We have to have witnesses and time keepers too,” Weintraub said.
After sending in all the information and documentation to the Guinness offices, the Schenectady JCC won’t know until about 12 weeks later whether their attempt was successful.
The count of registered participants was 269. However, a few of the younger participants had to take a break during the session, bringing their number to 266, so Guinness may change the final number.
For Cooper, the interest in Bokwa came after she retired from being a professional African dance instructor.
“I was watching the morning news in the spring of 2013 and saw Paul Moby, who is from South Africa, doing Bokwa and talking about its benefits,” Cooper said.
After learning the dance style with a few instructors in Albany, she went down to Queens in 2015 and became certified to teach Bokwa. She is certified to teach Bokwa step along with traditional Bokwa style.
“Bokwa is Africa’s answer to Zumba,” Cooper said with a laugh.
Although many in the crowd had never heard of Bokwa, let alone tried it, Cooper made it fun for everyone to at least try to keep in step.
Addison Stewart, one young participant who will be entering the second grade at Glencliff Elementary, said that she was a bit nervous to try.
“I’ve been dancing for a long time. I do ballet, jazz and tap,” Addison said with a smile.
As soon as the music began and Cooper began instructing, Addison had no trouble keeping up or making up some moves of her own.
“You want to remix that one?” was a frequent question Cooper asked. “You get the basics down and you just build from there,” Cooper said.
Members of Cooper’s regular class came as well.
They agreed that although the session was fun, the dance is often a lot more challenging to keep up with.
“She usually does more complicated steps, but for this crowd, it was perfect,” said one class member.
Several of the class members said that they loved Bokwa because of Cooper’s energy and because it can be a great workout.
Cooper warned that the dance can be addictive, which is how she came to love it.
In a matter of months, the Schenectady JCC will receive the official word from Guinness World Records.
If the attempt is not accepted, Weintraub and others at the Schenectady JCC will be doing their research to find another record to set for next year.
Either way, the event brought the community together for a common goal and to have fun doing it, which for Weintraub made it a success.
“So even if we get the BOKWA title from Guinness, I’m sure we’ll be looking for future records to break!” Weintraub said.
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