Dance + Fitness = Firm Fun

Posted on September 3, 2013 by Deborah Wenzler Farris

Kim Johnson-Rockafellow’s Barre Workout, one of our many Dance Fitness classes, is my class of choice these days. Was it Mark Twain who said, “Often imitated but never duplicated”? Kim is the real deal. Dancer/Choreographer extraordinaire, don’t worry about getting bored in her workout.

People of all ages and abilities show up for Kim’s class, including me, whenever I can make it. Student’s love the focus on alignment and mix of movement, stretch, weights, bands, balls, barres and mats (all to great music). Your entire body gets stretched, strengthened, firmed and it’s fun. You can’t beat that. But don’t take my word for it, read below to get a student’s perspective. Melissa Schoeffel is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at UW-Milwaukee, wife and mother of two sons.

The Body’s Own Resistance
by Melissa Schoeffel

The second side is always harder. That’s the bit you should remember when you show up for your first Dance Fitness class. It encapsulates what I’ve learned over the last few years. The second side is harder because even though you haven’t worked that side yet, your whole self is involved in working the first side, and your whole self is that much more tired for it. The second side is harder, but it’s where you learn about holding back and holding on—remembering to hold a little in reserve even while you give it everything you’ve got, and pushing those tired muscles through to the end of the routine, to the end of the class. The second side is about exploring the connections between the parts and the whole.

I started taking Dance Fitness when my youngest child started all-day, four-year-old kindergarten. It was the first time in many years that I felt like I could afford—in terms of both time and money—to take a couple of hours out of my work week to work out. Looking back, I realize how desperate I was to reclaim a body that had been given over to motherhood, to reclaim the ability to move that body in particular ways that I had long since abandoned. I was struggling with depression and wanted the exercise to buoy my mood, and I wanted to do something that was just for me.

In order to do this thing just for me, I had to, paradoxically, go into it without any illusions about what it was going to do for me: I wasn’t going to burst onto the beach the next summer with a “bikini body”; I wasn’t going to shed all the pounds I had accumulated since having two children and watching my metabolism slow to a late-thirties crawl. I didn’t need to look like I was in my twenties again; I just needed to be healthier, happier, and to recapture some of what it used to feel like to move.

I got more than I bargained for, because what I realized, fairly early on, is that even as I was feeling better (and looking better, I suppose), the best of what was happening was that I was feeling stronger. Because of the sweaty time I’ve spent wrestling with what our lovely instructor, Kim Johnson, will tell you is my “body’s own resistance,” I joyously found out that I could carry my five-year-old all the way home from the lakefront to Riverwest AFTER the Fourth of July fireworks. That’s two miles of walking at the end of a long night and carrying 42 pounds of a load that alternated between wriggling, whining child and dead weight. I can carry the heck out of some groceries too, and I have a physical understanding of what Kim is talking about when she says “shoulder girdle,” because I actually have one of those now. Even though my oldest child still calls me “Mush,” while affectionately (and irritatingly) poking me in my softer parts, there’s iron underneath there. And let’s face it, Mushy Mama can dance.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that something else that keeps me coming back, week after week, is that I get to be a part, albeit a small one, of the Danceworks community. I knew about Danceworks’ investment in the Milwaukee community before I started taking a class there, and I remember hoping, beforehand, that I would love the classes and the people as much as I loved the idea of Danceworks. I do. If I’m going to spend my money paying someone to make me sweat (a lot) twice a week, this is the mission and vision I want to support.

“Fun times with dance,” Kim wryly quipped the other morning, as we sweated through a routine that was a little extra challenging. Though it was clearly meant to be gently ironic in that particular moment, I was struck by how true it was of my whole experience with Danceworks.

Melissa is so much more than a small part of Danceworks. She and her family will be moving to West Texas soon and we are really going to miss her. But, I’ll be working on Skyping her into class. Once a Danceworker always a Danceworker.

We are happy to announce the launch of our new website (September 4) and online scheduling and registration system. Our new system will make it easier to sign up for classes, review your purchase history and monitor your personal account. Sign up for your Fall class now: Register here.

Thanks for visiting my Blog. Is there something you’d like to know more about…? Please let me know. –Deb Farris, Executive Director

❮ Joyful Noise Want to make it to the NBA--take Ballet ❯