On a recent Saturday morning, under a partial canopy of lush, sky-scraping trees, the blacktop at the Golden Gate Park Panhandle filled like a church: parishioners bustling in alone and in small posses, finding their places in rows on the concrete.
Kenny Walter skipped through the crowd of more than 50 dancers, hugging regulars and asking for newcomers’ names over the beat blaring from the speaker. As a needle-like mist spritzed dancers’ bare shoulders and midriffs, Walter promised, “One hour straight, no breaks, no holds barred.” He beamed at his congregation, and they beamed back.
“I’m filled with gratitude that we have this,” he said, adding, “When in doubt, twerk it out.”
“I love him,” a woman in row seven whispered to her friend.
Most Saturday mornings since the winter of 2020, Walter has led this dance-based fitness class, Turn Up SF (part of the organization Turn Up), at 11 a.m. in the Panhandle, between Masonic and Ashbury. There is a suggested donation of $15, and anyone can join in, including passersby.
With Walter at the front and pop music booming from the speaker, the group began rolling their hips and stretching their hands towards the sky. Ruthie Kurlant, age three, looked on from her stroller. “She’s fascinated,” said her dad. Soon, more strollers were pulled up next to hers, a trio of toddlers transfixed by the rhythmic hip shaking and clapping. Throughout the class, a man slept under a vivid yellow blanket a few yards behind the dancers.
The class has attracted a devoted following, who speak about it in sacred terms. “This has become my church, almost,” said Emily Heckman, 26. “It’s my favorite part about living in this neighborhood, just this community and the energy that Kenny brings to this park.”
Group fitness can bring on a feeling of ecstatic, sweaty wonder, with dancers tearing up while clapping on the beat to Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night Away.” More upscale versions, like the classes at Equinox, Soul Cycle, and Barry’s Bootcamp, can also be exclusive, inaccessible, or intimidating.
Turn Up SF, on the other hand, has no membership fees, upselling, humbling check-in experience, branded merch, or $17 juices. The class is pay-if-you-can, makes use of public space, and doesn’t care about your age or body size. (Recently, Heckman brought her mom to class. “She loved it,” Heckman said.)
Walters knows his regulars. He knows their children’s names, the trips they’re planning, the ones who are struggling with adjusting to new motherhood. He follows their dogs’ Instagram accounts, remembers which mid-2000s pop hits resonate with which dancers, and talks with attendees about Israel and Palestine. (The class has raised money for a number of causes, including to help a Palestinian family seeking safe passage out of Gaza.) On Saturday, when a Parks and Rec worker drove by, he and Walter greeted each other by name.
The sight of around 50 people doing a choreographed dance to Nicki Minaj’s Super Freaky Girl tends to give passersby pause. Emma Peloquin first spotted the class when she was driving by on a Saturday morning; now she’s been going most weeks for two years (“It’s in the routine”) and has made friends in the group. Mary Notsch, 66, walked by the class on the way to the Farmers Market, and now has been coming regularly for a year. “I’m hooked,” said Notsch, who has been doing dance-based fitness since the Jazzercise era.
“We were lookers for a long time,” said Lauren Davidson, 48. Lauren and her son Atticus, 10, first spotted the dancers while on a bike ride through the park. It was Atticus’ idea to join the class. At first, Lauren step-touched with trepidation.
“I always had a complex about being a bigger person, and not being a dancer,” she said. “There are very few words that strike more fear in me than choreography.” Now they’ve been attending class regularly for about three years. On Saturday, Atticus sprawled on a blanket reading a novel while Lauren grooved nearby.
Two joggers and their puppy ran north, rubbernecking to watch the dancers. On their way back they jumped into the fray, joining the back row and shaking it to Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie. The puppy twirled between them.
“Good music, good energy,” said one jogger. “Quintessential San Francisco.” They planned to come back.
Walter grew up in Sonoma, a closeted child dancing to Britney Spears music videos he made sure to switch off before his dad got home. As a teenager, he visited San Francisco as a member of a metal band. “I spent a lot of time cruising the Haight with my friends,” he said.
The city of his teens was lively, full of activities that even broke kids could partake in, he remembers. When he moved to the city in 2015, during the height of the tech boom, “things seemed more exclusive,” he said. So much of what made the city great had been sequestered behind venue walls and high ticket prices.
He got certified as a Zumba teacher just before the pandemic, and started leading classes on Zoom. The setting of Turn Up SF is a pandemic inheritance: Walter taught the first in-person classes to groups of twelve here, arriving early to mark chalk circles six feet apart on the ground. As pandemic protocol allowed for larger groups, the class ballooned by word of mouth: There is no website, and no advertising.
It also doesn’t pay the bills. Less than half the people who take the class pay for it, and Walter says he uses the money he gets to pay for permits, liability insurance, signs, and speakers. Teaching Turn Up is more like a passion project — he still has his full-time job working merchandising for a home furnishings retailer, and also teaches a few nights a week at the upscale gym Equinox (one of their teachers scouted him while he was teaching Turn It Up in the park).
“It’s nice to have something that’s free,” he said. “Not just for participants, but for people who are walking by.” The vision of the class is “accessibility, community, acceptance,” he said. “And everyone’s looking to kind of get out and just shake it off a bit, right? Just shake their booties and groove.”
Late in class, Walter tossed his hat into the air, threw himself onto the concrete, and twerked as the group cheered.
A family of four walked by; the woman and her teenage son jumped in and started dancing, instantly picking up the choreo to Kelly Rowland singing “I told y'all I was gonna bump like this” while the dad and teenage daughter looked on more doubtfully. “I just felt like dancing,” said the woman. When the song was over, they continued on their walk.
In the last moments, a man dressed in a full-body banana costume zoomed by on a scooter. Without pausing, the banana nodded at the dancers and raised a single fist in the air. Cheers erupted from the crowd.
When the final bars of the final song rang out, the dancers applauded themselves, embraced, swigged water, and took a group photo. Then they gathered their detritus of coffee mugs and tote bags from the grass and jumped on bikes and e-scooters, or jogged away across the panhandle. The man under the vivid yellow blanket was still asleep. The fog was gone, replaced by bright sunshine.
A group of friends converged, wiping away their sweat. It had been their first week taking the class together; everyone agreed the class had gone by quickly.
“I had no idea what I’m doing, I have zero dance background, I was just going on vibes,” said one. “But it was fun.”
