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FYI: ‘Gypsies’ are people of the Diaspora of Romani culture.

Light on your feet

Finding fun and happiness while dancing your way to fitness

BY DONA LYNN WILLIAMS

So often when devising a fitness plan, we enumerate all the things from which we must refrain. We make a mental list of pleasures that must be expunged from our daily life, food we can’t enjoy, drinks we dare not imbibe. Sometimes we design a regimen of suffering to accompany this abstinence: tummy crunches, squats, arm curls, bench presses, half an hour on a treadmill or stationary bike parked in front of a television.

But let’s face it, if you’re not having any fun getting fit, you won’t keep up that regimen for long. Forcing yourself to endure pain and hunger will only put your mind, body and spirit at odds with one another. I propose that it’s possible to achieve fitness while augmenting pleasure instead of suffering, by adding something to your life instead of taking something away. My suggestion: Take a dance class.

Dance isn’t just another workout routine. Dance is art. In its form, the body itself is the expressive medium, and there is no distinction between creator and creation. You’ll need no tools, only a commitment to being present, and some space to move in. It’s an excellent way to get aquatinted with your body, to find out how it works, how it moves, what it can do.

Dance is a marriage of mental and physical creative processes, and provides an outlet for expression that can also be a means of getting into shape. During the course of a class, you’ll get an aerobic workout while toning muscles you didn’t even know you had. You’ll huff and sweat, stretch and strengthen just as much as you would at the gym. But it’s fun.

The body carves lines through space. It leaps, twirls, glides and rolls. You can be elegant or funky, silly or severe. You can try on different ways of being, of moving, of demonstrating emotion.

There are myriad dance studios in our area offering study of a multitude of different styles of dance. Classes in the traditional Western forms of dance like ballet, tap and jazz are easy to come by. Lately there has been a growth in popularity for more contemporary and ethnic styles of dance. Many studios have responded by adding hip-hop or street dancing to their schedule of classes.

One organization goes even further, by specializing in alternative styles that don’t often get taught at other venues. The Higher Movement Drum and Dance Studio (778 Francis St., SLO, 596-0609) teaches classes in dance styles ranging from modern and salsa to African and Middle Eastern, with some martial arts such as Aikido thrown into the mix. Higher Movement instructors also teach African and Arabic drumming techniques, as many of their dance classes are accompanied by live drumming. What you won’t find is ballet and jazz, since those styles are so well represented at other studios around the county.

Primal sexuality

Higher Movement’s unique specialization began as a fluke, says Jenna Mitchell, the studio’s owner. She was looking for a home for her Middle Eastern class while another instructor, Marsha Butler, had an orphaned African dance troupe called the Higher Movement Drum and Dance Ensemble.

When Barbara Anderson of In Motion dance studio decided to pack it in and sell, Mitchell and Butler bought the studio and became partners, opening up in September of 2000. As they built their schedule, they gathered other homeless dance teachers from around the area and ended up with the eclectic mix that taps into everything from the ancient to the progressive and which sets Higher Movement apart from many other dance schools.

Mitchell has owned the studio by herself since January 2001.

"My biggest goal is to host a studio that is friendly mainly to adults," Mitchell says, "where you can feel comfortable whether you’ve never danced before or just haven’t for a long time."

The classes taught at Higher Movement lend themselves well to all ages, genders and body styles. You don’t have to be a slim ‘n’ trim, prima-ballerina type to move well in an African dance class. In fact, a little junk-in-the-trunk only adds to the primal sexuality of the style. In the class I attended, we learned the Soli dance of Guinea’s Su Su people, which is performed to commemorate a circumcision.

Tim Costa of the band Goza pounded rhythmically on African drums while Marsha Butler had me and the other students gyrating wildly, performing animalistic dance combinations that utilize the entire body. The pace is fierce and not for the faint-hearted, so don’t bother coming if you’re afraid of breaking a sweat. If this class won’t get you into shape, nothing will. The African dance class meets at the Higher Movement studio Friday morning at 10:45 or the old gym at Cuesta College Wednesday at 6pm.

It’s tempting to think of Jenna Mitchell’s Middle Eastern class as simply "belly dancing," but that term is a Western creation, describing the "cabaret" style of Middle Eastern dance that’s usually performed in night clubs. Her focus is more on folk dances from different regions of the Middle East. In her class you might learn the Saidi Cane dance of Egypt or the Karshilama dance of Turkish gypsies.

Mitchell does teach the veil dance–though it’s not authentically Middle Eastern–because it’s so popular. This coquettish dance can be used to beguile a lover and stimulate the "appetites." Look for the Middle Eastern class at Higher Movement on Tuesday at 6pm.

Ethnically inspired

For other ethnically inspired classes, try out Mary Donnelley’s World Dance, which teaches an American tribal style on Tuesday at 7:30pm in the American Dance studio (2047 Parker Lane SLO, 543-4409). In Pismo Beach, you can find Polynesian and sacred dance at Gloria’s Dance Studio (558 Price St., 773-1227). If Latin dance intrigues you, visit www.communityprograms.net for a schedule of classes, including salsa and cha-cha, offered as part of the community recreation program at Cuesta College.

From the very ancient to the very contemporary, the classes at Higher Movement span the centuries. It’s the only commercial studio in the county that offers instruction in modern dance, a style well represented in cosmopolitan areas. Modern dance embodies a variety of different concepts rather than a specific vocabulary of movement, as in ballet.

In fact, it can be said that the use of varied concepts in modern dance is the technique. During class you might be asked to move as if you were extremely heavy or extremely light, while physically exploring ideas like weight-shift, varied velocity and dynamism.

Diana Stanton teaches what she calls a "released athletic" style of modern dance, currently en vogue in contemporary dance circles. In her mind, modern dance is closer to jazz music than the jazz style of dance because it often breaks out of four-four rhythm. "It can highlight syncopation and utilize improvisation where the dancers make themselves available to spontaneous response," says Stanton.

The Variable Velocity modern dance troupe, which is co-instructed by Stanton and Jude Clark-Warnisher, holds its rehearsals at the Higher Movement Dance Studio on Thursday at 7pm. The class is open to the public. In late February, Variable Velocity also will be inviting people of all ages to join rehearsals for a piece to be performed at a dance concert in June.

For the most part, commercial dance studios require a monthly tuition dependent on the number of classes you sign up for per week, but most also allow you to pay by the class. That makes it easy to drop in and try out some different styles to find one that suits you. Classes at Higher Movement cost $8-$10 for a single class and $27-$37 per month for one class per week. Call Higher Movement Drum and Dance Studio (546-0609) for a complete schedule of classes.

The sheer multitude of dance schools in the area offering classes just about every day and night means that anyone with the inclination can find a class that fits her or his schedule. The sooner you begin, the sooner you’ll be feeling the results both mentally and physically. You’ll dazzle your friends with your newfound poise and suppleness, and you just might drop a pants size. Æ

Dona Lynn Williams once didn’t dance for a week and her weight ballooned to 98 pounds.




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