History in our Bodies — Supernatural VR Fitness and Disney Music
Supernatural VR plus Disney songs equals something really special.
The history of the Walt Disney Company is a musical history. If a certain cartoon mouse hadn’t run smack into chaotic renditions of Turkey in the Straw and Steamboat Bill in the classic short Steamboat Willie (1928), it’s likely that the magical world of Disney would not exist today. When You Wish Upon a Star, It’s a Small World (After All), the music in the Silly Symphonies, the music that strikes you as you walk down Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland, Part of Your World, Let it Go, We Don’t Talk About Bruno; it’s a grand sweep of wildly varied song spanning 100 years that forms a tapestry that is not just nostalgic, but that often — when things hit just right — also causes you to feel something.
Across movies, television, and theme parks, Disney has uncorked the emotional genie from the bottle, through music, again and again; and now an innovative partnership has extended that musical legacy to a surprising new platform: Virtual Reality.
The first thing you notice when you strap on the VR goggles and pick up the controllers to play Supernatural — the premier fitness platform on the Oculus, now META, Quest — is how embracing it all is. Coaches appear and greet you as a fellow “athlete.” Sometimes they joke with you. Occasionally they’ll tell you personal stories about their lives and their families. No Boot Camp-style shouting here: the pre-recorded narrations use a sort of enthusiastic optimism that lifts you up while you’re wildly swinging your arms and ducking moving targets — all synchronized to a dance-able choreography.
Similarly, the first thing I noticed when I sat down to have a conversation with Supernatural’s Content Lead, Jess Zobler, was that this attitude didn’t stop at the coaches.
Jess was thoughtful, enthusiastic and seemed delighted to talk about what had drawn me to this conversation in the first place: how it was that a VR fitness program had managed to become one of the most emotionally powerful Disney music experiences being produced today? How does it move its “athletes” beyond the expected pleasant musical nostalgia of hearing familiar songs during their workout to them giggling with delight, cheering in triumph and — perhaps, most surprisingly — crying real tears.
While it is usually a futile task to try and get to the root of why a piece of music in a certain setting under certain conditions is emotionally affecting — music is far too slippery to be pinned down with simple equations — I did recognize that there was some sort of special sauce that the Supernatural team was ladling over these songs and Jess was kind enough to try and explain the methodology behind it.
First a quick explanation about what Supernatural is and how it works. The player (“athlete”) signs up through a Quest headset and launches the game where you meet Coach Leanne who takes you through some simple steps to calibrate the experience to the size of your body. Then you can run through some beginning practice rounds or just head straight in. Either way, your controllers morph into either bats or boxing gloves, depending on the routine, and you find yourself standing in a gorgeous natural landscape — the Isle of Skye, the Dolomites in Italy, the Moon — while a song plays and virtual targets come at you. You either punch the targets with your virtual fists or whack them with your virtual bat and this creates a kind of percussive cardio workout.
While there are other VR programs that will take you this far, the genius of Supernatural is that it coaxes the player beyond a simple aerobic routine and, via shifting triangles through which your body glides and post-target visual trails, it creates movement that feels like choreography. With the right music at the right moment and with the right attitude, the player is dancing. And dancing, as Jess points out, means something.
“Moving our bodies to music isn’t really a novel thing, we’ve been doing it throughout history for thousands and thousands of years. It’s one of the original forms of expression. I think about those times when I get overwhelmed with emotion, it makes sense, right? We’re feeling those things. We’re feeling so much history in our bodies.”
Supernatural launched near the beginning of the COVID pandemic (“It was absolutely chaos, but it was a helpful distraction.”), which it weathered, partially by being well positioned in the home fitness space at a time when people were reaching for exactly that, but also by what seems to be a particularly strong and supportive internal structure.
“We’re really fortunate because our team is really close. It’s a remarkably talented and creative batch of people. I think for the first time in my career I can go away and have a meal with anyone at the company and not only chat for hours, but walk away learning something. Everyone has such a passion for what they do and we’re so supercharged by the impact we see our product having. It’s so funny because we have a correlation to Disney because we like to call the Supernatural community ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ but I think that’s second only to Disney.”
One of the first connections the athlete makes when immersing themselves into Supernatural is with the Coaches who guide the workouts. They are engaging and project a kind of enthusiasm that registers as refreshingly authentic. This connection extends beyond the platform; the Coaches are active in social media, carrying that remarkable positivity and kindness directly to their fans in the outside world. The more you hear from them, the more you realize that their personas are not an act: seemingly like everything at this company, the Coaches walk the walk.
“Being able to spend time with them is really incredible. Not only are they really great co-workers, but they’re really good friends of mine. They provide amazing advice. They give really great hugs. It’s really lovely. It’s also so nice to know that they’re on your team. They have your back. Even if I’m having a personal problem outside of work, I know that I have the coaches to talk to. I resonate with them so deeply that I feel like I can be really vulnerable with them. And we’re all just really passionate about what we do. We never get tired of interacting with the community because that’s what actually makes us all want to do what we do. It’s the best part of what we do.”
Much of the Supernatural experience’s success lies in the clever intricacies of its choreography which is communicated to the user through “target mapping” — the gamified iconography that moves the player’s body. It’s both a science and an art.
“We have an entire team of professional choreographers. It’s not computer generated. That level of connection is imperative to what we’re talking about, that EMOTIVE result. Everything is done really intentionally from start to finish. So each choreographer might have his own process, but it’s really a trifecta not just with the choreographer, but also with our music curation team, and also with the Coach. Each workout is a little bit different, so one idea might stem from a music curator, which might then inform the choreography, which would then inform the coaching. And then sometimes it’s the Coach and they are bringing something which they are really developing closely with the choreography team. It’s kind of a constant collaboration all the way down the line, between that group, all the way through the studio, post-production. We love it. We’re like our own independent creative studio.”
The partnership with Disney to produce routines based on the company’s vast catalog of music — not only songs from the animated classics, but movie themes like those from the Star Wars or Indiana Jones films, or even the catalog of the band Queen (which Disney owns) — was quite an opportunity for Supernatural. An audience seemed to be waiting at the gate, excited to workout to these songs that they had never expected to have as a part of their fitness routines — the expectation that all workout music must sound like EDM or Drum and Bass is blown out of the water pretty quickly when you’re panting and sweating to A Spoonful of Sugar. Supernatural’s already confident redefinition of what exercise meant was gaining a whole new set of textures to work with, and, with those, some built-in emotional touchstones.
“So when we select the music we try to balance it between what we hear from the members that they really love — what they’re requesting — but also about what feels good in the Supernatural experience. When we were originally thinking about curation for Supernatural, we were thinking about two different prongs, one is ‘Does it get me dancing? Does it get me moving my body?’ Or ‘Does it get me to feel powerful or empowered?’”
“We found that we could use classical, or musicals because they’re both dynamic and emotive and that’s a bit where Disney comes into play… It resonates with everyone. It’s nostalgic whether you remember something from your childhood or whether your parents or kids are listening to the new soundtracks or films. It’s just that magic of the storytelling of Disney: It really translates into Supernatural. So when we got the opportunity to work with Disney through Universal Music Group, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh! Absolutely this is something we want to do!’”
The Supernatural team jumped into the Disney catalog head-first; the first workout, hosted by the brilliant and hilarious Coach Raneir Pollard, featured songs from The Lion King (1994), Frozen (2013 — Yes, THAT song.), Mary Poppins (1964), The Little Mermaid (1989), Hercules (1997)and a snippet of It’s a Small World (After All), just in case you needed an ear-worm to follow you around for the rest of the day. The workout is a delight and seemed to serve as a successful proof of concept which opened the floodgates for the series to take on broader and more varied songs.
“When we initially got the first Disney workout I think it was the most intense brawl I have ever experienced, for the CHOREOGRAPHERS! We ended up having to split it up so that there was one person on each song. It was the only way we could move forward because they were so excited to work on it.”
Soon there was a workout based on Disney heroes and a separate one for villains, workouts for Encanto (2021) and for The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and workouts that delved even deeper into older Disney song classics. As the music curators explored the catalog, the choreographers began to explore new ways to coax more performative moves — moves that resembled acting — out of the athlete. In Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo we are waving our wands like a Fairy Godmother. In The Bare Necessities, we swing our arms like King Louis from The Jungle Book (1967). In one of the most fascinating and engrossing examples of this combustion of performance, dance, and exercise; an instrumental suite from Peter Pan (1953) has you sword-fighting like a pirate on the bowsprit of a ship! (You’ll have to trust me here; this works startlingly well!)
“It’s so cool to hear that this gets picked up because it’s very very intentional. There are almost like layers of hidden Easter Eggs where, depending on your level of context, it might go over someone’s head, but other people might go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so cool!’ We have a very passionate group of Disney fans at this company. I think all of our choreographers are very big Disney fans. It doesn’t take very much effort to get them excited about working on a Disney project. We really study the work. We study the films. We try to immerse you in the world as best we can. We’re taking inspiration from the characters, from the lyrics, from the story. We can create these surprise and delight elements.”
Surprise and delight and some startling emotional reactions; the song Surface Pressure from Encanto is one that has gained a resonance outside of the context of the film and, in the dance that Supernatural coaxes out of the athlete, along with the workout’s associated profundity of sweat, it can trigger feelings perhaps even more intense than those that were processed when hearing the song initially.
An exercise program that can produce satisfying tears, how is this possible?
“That’s the magic, right? That is the combination of the elements. It’s really hard to ignore when that happens. I regularly get full body chills. It’s this beautiful crescendo of all of the elements coming together.
“We have these deep emotional ties to music. Emotions don’t always have to be crying. Sometimes I’m crying because I’m laughing so hard. Gosh, (Coach) Mark just kills me. But also I like to call it the ‘climb the mountain’ feeling. There are some songs where you feel like you’ve just summited a mountain when you get to the pinnacle, to the peak of the song. It makes you feel so emotional and empowered.”
“It’s part of the power of VR. You’ve got that total immersion space. You’re not really worried about where you are and you’re not really worried about what you’re doing. You’re able to be fully present. You feel it everywhere. It’s an embodied experience. It’s this perfect match between physical experience, auditory experience, and visual. And then you add sweating on top of that. Even more exhilarating.”
Jess also noted, “First thing I think about Surface Pressure is that we put it in the Heroes workout.” Excellent point taken, Jess.
The early success of the workouts and the approval from The Walt Disney Company, who did have some oversight over the use of their songs (“They have a level of perfectionism to what they do.”), led to more opportunities such as the now yearly tradition of Star Wars workouts on May the 4th, Star Wars Day. Dressed as characters from the film series, the coaches lead the athletes through a fascinating hybrid of narrative adventure, workout, and musical celebration to the classic themes from the world’s most famous space opera. The abbreviated window of availability for which they had the license to use John Williams’ themes, instead of being a limitation, turned it into an experience where people had to make it a priority to attend.
“It became its own event. That was the first time we did something like that and Star Wars felt like the perfect partnership.
“The fostering of our relationship with Disney really helped us in our conversations with Lucasfilm and if we wouldn’t have had that good of a bond with them, we might not have gotten that approval. But we were the first digital fitness partner to get approval to use the Star Wars IP, which is AMAZING! Especially too, we were little small beings at that time [laughs] and they [Disney] really vouched for us and set us up for success.
“With that opportunity, we wanted to make this the best that we can and so we really turned that Star Wars workout into its own mini-storybook. You know, we brought the coaches and the athletes into the storyline. We tried to really immerse you into this world. We really tried to immerse you into that environment. Fun fact, we actually digitally removed the Earth from our moon environment for that workout, because there’s no Earth in Star Wars. It’s all down to the tiny little details.
“When we brought it back [for the second year], we had been so successful that we were able to do it for a week.”
Supernatural is giddy with a breadth of music catalog right now. When asked about her personal favorite workouts Jess mentioned routines as wildly diverse as the country-themed Hoedown Throwdown, Jason Derulo’s song Jalebi Baby and the Afrovibe — The Drop workout. The collection is growing daily and the partnership with Disney and its extensive IP feels like a particularly sparkly jewel in that crown. And there is, evidently, a lot more music coming from the House of Mouse, including the just-about-to-be-dropped Princess Power!
“A lot more Disney. Holidays are going to be absolutely ridiculous, we have so many ideas being generated right now.
“With Barbie we’re thinking a lot about these kinds of structures and this August is also a month where Disney is really leaning into the Princess IP; so we wanted to take this idea and really Supernaturalize it. The workout itself is more about the Princess’ actual power. It’s about the choices that they have to make. It’s about breaking out of molds and barriers that they’ve been put in. So we really were specific to pick songs that weren’t the love songs; that they were more about their personal identity. And so it’s a really awesome and empowering workout. Coach Dwana is on this one, which is going to make it incredible and so really it’s tuned with that. We really love the way the ‘young girl’ IP is moving toward. It’s not just this Princess workout, it’s got this backbone to it that is so uplifting and empowering and energizing.”
Princess Power, dropping on August 14th, has a killer playlist featuring Halle Bailey’s earth-shattering rendition of Part of your World from The Little Mermaid (2023), Honor to Us All from Mulan (1998), Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas (1995) and Paige O’Hara’s classic Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991).
I’m getting emotional just thinking about it.
With the technology of Virtual Reality still finding its footing, a handful of apps have risen above to prove its viability. Supernatural is one of those. It has struck gold with a formula combining art and fitness in a thoughtful and engrossing way; and the collaboration with Disney has extended that success even further by lacing the experience with several generation’s worth of lyrical, melodic, emotional resonance to help you “climb that mountain.”
With thanks to Jess Zobler and the whole Supernatural team for being so generous with their time and for being so infectiously enthusiastic, let’s let Jess sum up the Supernatural experience with the last word:
“Use the music. It gives you so much.”
Find Supernatural through your META Quest headset or at their website:
Their official Facebook group is pretty lively, as well:
Princess Power will drop on August 14th. Will you be there for it? Or for next year’s Star Wars Day? Or for another round of Surface Pressure? Let me know in the comments!
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times