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Dancing and Dipping

 

 

The art of dance combined with the joy of cooking last week in Atlanta, when more than 50 Boys and Girls Club members crafted salsa recipes and hit the dance floor in the name of healthy living.
 
Students from several Atlanta area Boys and Girls Clubs joined with professional dance troupe Moving in the Spirit for a night of salsa on Oct. 12 — aptly dubbed “Shaking Hips and Dipping Chips.” Clubs competed to create the best healthy salsa recipe and then danced the salsa with the professional dancers, helping kids get fit in a unique way.
 
“It’s a way for kids to get active, but it’s also a fun way to get active. It’s not just, you have to do pushups, you have to run,” says Regan Lowring, a Moving in the Spirit dancer. “Dance is a way for you to be active and still have fun at the same time.”
 
Both the Boys and Girls Club and Moving in the Spirit are Atlanta Falcons Fitness Zone partner groups, and combined their interests for one big event. The local clubs crafted salsa recipes for the competition, and all contestants learned a simple salsa routine, which were taught by a
Moving in the Spirit board member (who coincidentally met his wife while salsa-ing).
 
Many of the kids were shy at first, and dancers had to work a little to bring them out of their shell, Louring recalls. Eventually, however, everybody seemed to have a good time. Falcons cheerleaders on hand for the event hit the floor as well, and even the professional dancers learned a few steps.
 
“It was all new to us. It’s not like modern dance; there are very rigid steps you have to follow,” Louring says.
 
And while a professional dance troupe partnering with an NFL team might not seem like an obvious link, Moving in the Spirit founder Dana Lupton noted that there are some unique parallels between the elegance of dance and the toughness of football.
 
“If you look at football players, they’re wearing tights,” she says, laughing. “We wear more clothes than the football players do! They are focused, and we are focused.”