In an atmosphere that feels more like a fiesta than an exercise class, smiling women jump, bounce, whirl, and shake their hips.

Wearing sneakers, t-shirts, and tight-fitting spandex, the women dance while up front, their teacher, Liz Vasquez, in a t-shirt that says, “Inspire me, Move me,” dances and sings to the Spanish lyrics of salsa, meringue, and other tunes. This is not just any dance class. It’s Zumba!

How do you spell fitness and health? You might try D-A-N-C-E. For women of all ages, sizes, and experience levels, dance may be the key to a healthy life. While health experts exhort us to get out there and exercise, it can feel like a command and not an invitation. Dance provides more health benefits than you may realize and is a physical activity many of us can enjoy well into our senior years. Dance forms like Zumba, ballroom, swing, belly dance, and more keep us vital and cheerful. Let’s see how a few Tidewater women enliven their lives by dancing.

DANCE PARTY

For about a decade, Liz Vazquez, 43, taught fitness classes here in Tidewater, helping her students to get or stay in shape. Too often, she had to remind them to come back to class after tough workouts. A few years ago, she heard about something new: a wonderful program of exercise created by Beto Perez from Columbia that married the world of fitness to the joy of dance.

“I looked into it and realized I had stumbled onto something very different,” Liz said. “It was so energetic and everyone was having so much fun, and I said ‘Wow!’”

Liz became a licensed Zumba instructor in 2007, joining more than 3,000 certified teachers all over the world. Yet Zumba was unknown locally. She had to nudge area studios to let her teach this amazing program and finally got some classes going in 2008. She discovered that the spirit of fun, the delight of the music, and the dance moves made it easy for students to commit to coming back to class month after month.

Liz’s way with her students encourages them to keep moving, and the Zumba sound tracks feature different tempos, some slower than others. She encourages them to take frequent water breaks, asking “Are you feeling all right?” She assists them by modeling moves herself, giving them constant positive feedback. Liz is built strong with capable muscles and an expansive grin.

One of her students, medical assistant Jessica Coryea, 29, dances beside Liz at the front of the class tonight, motivated by Zumba’s power to transform regular folks into energetic dancers. She had initially looked for a form of exercise to help her gain muscle tone, but she thought going to a gym would be boring. Although she wasn’t obese, she says she felt “a little squishy around the middle.”

“I feel really self-confident and capable now, really good about me, even though I never took any kind of dance classes early in my life,” Jessica said.

She added that she lost about 15 pounds in the first seven months that she took Zumba, and that her time in class is a complete stress reliever, an escape. At first, she took Zumba only one night a week, but now she’s dancing two times a week.

Liz knows that people are really working their bodies with Zumba, even though it seems like they’re just dancing, just as they might in a night club, but following a leader.

“When it comes to dancing, even a simple step, you are moving, moving, and you have to come from your core area, and with Zumba, pretty soon you are sweating,” Liz said, pulling her damp shirt away from her middle.

Don’t look for a slow step-by-step instruction. In Zumba class, you literally jump right in.

“With Zumba, we show along, while the music is playing, how we are doing the steps as I motion with my hands,” Liz explained, “and the students can follow where I’m going.”

Liz has done more than just get a few Zumba classes started locally. She also helps lead a huge group of Zumba enthusiasts for a three-hour Zumba Marathon at Hardees’s Latin Festival that’s taken place at the Virginia Beach oceanfront the last two years. She says Zumba is good for all generations. Children and adults can also take Zumba tonic classes, focusing on workouts of certain muscle groups using small weights, at some area YMCA locations.

A SENSE OF WELL BEING

Fitness gurus from many disciplines like to incorporate dance because of four important benefits: dancing improves flexibility, strength, endurance, and a sense of well being. While people dance, their heart rate is elevated, and they get a boost in stamina.

At the Great Neck Recreation Center this fall, a new class will energize adult students using dance routines and unique props like chairs, plastic gliders, and body bars. “Fitness through Dance” is a six-week program developed by Jaq Clark, 26, a Penn State grad currently pursuing a master’s degree in exercise science at ODU. She’s been an active fitness teacher for several years in Virginia Beach and has taken classes in all styles of dance—from Zumba to ballroom. During an internship developing wellness programs at Virginia Wesleyan College, she discovered the fun of “chair dancing,” in which students do exercise moves on and around a chair.

“We had students from the ages of 18 and up along with mature, middle-aged professors and staff,” Jaq explained. “They had so much fun, so I thought we’d try it at Great Neck, adding routines from other forms of dance, like ballet, modern, and hip-hop.”

It’s not the only dance class in the fall catalog for Virginia Beach’s recreation centers; there are classes in square dance for seniors, beach shag, Bollywood dance—which blends classic Indian folk styles with Western music, contemporary dance, belly dance, hip hop, and adult ballet. What makes dance such a hit? Jaq thinks that using dance as exercise is very motivating because it takes the emphasis off the idea of a workout and places it on enjoying yourself, bringing more self awareness, as opposed to the sense of competition in other fitness styles or sports.

“Dance can be thought of as an overall lighter style of exercise,” Jaq said. “It’s fun and adaptable to all ages.” She and her boyfriend have just signed up for ballroom dance classes next, a deal they found on Groupon. Perhaps she’ll join the growing number of folks who have been inspired by “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing with the Stars.” Or maybe she’ll dance into her later years like many who love ballroom dance’s many forms.

BALLROOM FEVER

By day she’s a competent mortgage banker at BB&T in Northern Suffolk. But that’s not all there is to Donna Campbell, a petite blond in her early 60s, who is just as comfortable in sequins and dancing shoes as in her business attire. Donna loves to dance.

Since 1994, when Donna traded Jazzercise for shag lessons, she’s been dancing for her joy, health, and happiness.  And after she went to a ballroom dance at the Langley AFB officer’s club, she was truly inspired. She found a dance instructor and told him she wanted three lessons, one each to learn cha-cha, swing, and the rumba.

“Imagine that, I thought I’d get it right in three lessons!” she exclaimed.

Part of Donna’s rationale for switching to dance was that Jazzercise began to play havoc with her joints, but while dancing on a “floating floor,” she noticed not even a tinge of pain in her hips or knees.

This Sunday morning, Donna joins her dear friends, members of the Tidewater chapter of USA Dance, for a Ballroom Brunch at Chester’s Upper Deck Restaurant at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. Most of the crowd was here last night for the restaurant’s ballroom night.

The room looks festive enough to host a prom with white linens covering tables and chairs, a dance floor ringed with twinkling lights and sporting a disco ball, and on the stage, the keyboards and sound gear of Roberto Henriquez, a popular East Coast musician who sings and performs on keyboards. Roberto’s amazing repertoire supplies just the right rhythms and moods for so many waltzes, foxtrots, and rumbas.

USA Dance is a national nonprofit dedicated to ballroom dance in its many forms. Club members pay $25 per year in dues and attend monthly dance events every fourth Saturday at the Ocean View Knights of Columbus Hall and at other venues, too. Donna Campbell has been on USA Dance’s board and loves the opportunity it brings her.

“Dancing, more than any other thing, has been a confidence builder for me,” she said. “It refreshes me and gives me a chance to shine in a different way.”

Ballroom dancing has two forms: social dance and competition, like the shows we see on television. And while USA Dance is a social dance organization, Donna keeps perfecting her tango and other styles by taking dance lessons—currently with Wesley Acker—to be a better dancer; she’s competed at bronze and silver levels. She’s also danced in ballroom exhibitions, which are put on by dance studios to help their students and teachers show off their skills.

Her friend, Wanda Smith, the founder of this chapter of USA dance, gives Donna a hug and compliments her on her sparkling skirt. Donna says when you are a ballroom dancer, you dress up with “a little bit of elegance,” including glittering jewelry. Twirling her ankle, she shows off flexible high-heeled dance shoes with soft suede soles.

“My feet never hurt!” she said.

Wanda points out honored elder members of the group, like the widower in his 90s who comes to all their dances. He and his late wife were members of USA Dance, and he still attends their gatherings.

In fact, ballroom dance is associated with many positive health effects. According to a 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, ballroom dancing twice a week reduces the likelihood of dementia. Not only is it great as aerobic exercise, it helps the brain, too.

“People recovering from heart attacks and strokes do really well with ballroom dance,” Wanda said, “since the music and movement of each dance helps bring back memories and keeps them going.”

Wanda’s husband, Jerry, asks Donna to dance, and they float across the dance floor as they move through the steps of a fox trot. It’s good manners for members of the club to take turns with different partners. And in ballroom dance, the traditional roles of men and women seem stable. Donna explains that the role of the male dancer is to “hold a frame for the woman to dance within,” recalling gentlemanly ways of the past. Donna reminded me about the movie “Saturday Night Fever” and how the characters worked all week and lived for the chance to express themselves on the dance floor.

“You’re in a different world when you dance,” says Donna.

From Zumba to line dancing, hip hop to tango, women and men who dance seem to live happier and healthier lives. Perhaps, dance is just what the doctor ordered: a prescription for keeping young, vital, and healthy—no matter our age. 

For more information:

• Zumba: Visit zumbavb.blogspot.com

• Va. Beach Recreation Centers: Visit vbgov.com.

• USA dance: Visit www.usadance.org for a list of chapters and activities.

Kathleen Fogarty lives in Va. Beach.