A Dance Workout Challenge

“You’re sitting at a table alone in Buenos Aires,” fitness instructor Rosie Fiedelman says, looking up at us beguilingly from beneath her long, curled lashes, as she turns on some tango music in the exercise studio where she’s teaching. “It will soon be dawn. You see him across the room. You’re wearing a sexy black dress slit up the leg and high strappy heels. You have a flower in your hair. It’s your last chance. You walk toward him.”Actually, the 20-something Ms. Fiedelman is wearing a sleeveless hoodie and jazz pants, but we believe her anyway as she dances toward her imagined prey. We’ve spent half an hour learning her routine — building from simple mambo steps into drags and turns and, for those who can, dramatic jumps. Sweat is pouring from foreheads, the music is fast, and Ms. Fiedelman doesn’t stop moving. As we finish a round, we hear her say, “five, six, seven, eight,” and start up again — those four counts being our only break.This dance class, held at an Equinox gym on the West Side, has attracted an exuberant motley crew common to gym classes: a dozen or so well-trained dancers, a couple of aristocratic-looking beauties who seem to have wandered in from the American Ballet Theatre, a handful of toned bodies old to the gym but new to dance class, and a few pure, earnest beginners. All are happily sweating — and thinking hard as the music plays on.“Your faces!” Ms. Fiedelman cries out, contorting her own pretty features into a mimicking frown. “You want to lure him.” Actually, we’re probably scaring “him.” So intent are we on getting the steps and moving with the group to avoid collisions, seduction is the furthest thing from our minds.Not so for Ms. Fiedelman, who has been entrancing audiences since she began dancing at age 7 at the Summit School of Dance in Breckenridge, Colo. “From my very first class, I just loved dance,” she says in an interview. “I knew this is where I’m supposed to be.”She spent her summers at training camps, including the renowned Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School in Steamboat Springs, Colo. After two years at the University of Colorado at Boulder, she made her way to Fordham University and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, with its famously rigorous training. She danced with several different companies, including Calvin Wiley Dance Theatre and Jennifer Muller’s The Works, before successfully auditioning last year for “In the Heights,” an Off-Broadway hit about two days in the life of Washington Heights. A wildly high-spirited musical that will move to Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre in February, “In the Heights” has a mostly Latin cast. Ms. Fiedelman isn’t Latin — her father is Jewish and her mother Hawaiian — but her slightly exotic, Polynesian looks fit in perfectly.In her aerobic dance classes, she encourages students to “have fun.” “We’re not on the treadmill, thank God,” she says cheerfully. “We’re dancing.”The exhortation works, as people simultaneously relax and try harder. Ms. Fiedelman believes that dance offers the perfect workout, both because it’s fun and because it “gives longevity.” Dancers learn to take care of their bodies, avoiding the wear and tear of rougher workouts. “Try not to put 500% into every single step,” she counsels. “Let it build and fall. Yes, it’s good that you’re strong, but learn to release. Exhale into the movement. Find a softness in your legs and strength in your abdomen.” We try one final time. At last, all the students, regardless of fitness level, basically have it — and all are looking good.“She has such joy in her dancing, which she gives to us,” one student, Karen Hatem, says when the class is over. “Even as we struggle.”Tuesdays, 9:30 a.m., at Equinox, 205 E. 85th St. at Third Avenue, 212-439-8500, among other Equinox locations; Fridays, 5:30 p.m. at The Sports Club/LA, 45 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-218-8600, and Sundays, 10:30 a.m and 5:30 p.m., at Reebok Sports Club/NY, 160 Columbus Ave. at 67th Street. Daily guest passes at both gyms are $35.

A Dance Workout Challenge

A Dance Workout Challenge

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