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Love the idea of learning to dance, but don’t want to go the whole hog of formal ballroom or Latin lessons? If so, a North Shore dance teacher might just have the answer.
Helena Morgan, a trained ballet dancer-turned-teacher, has started FitSteps classes every week in Warkworth, a programme she discovered in the UK and brought to NZ around a decade ago.
The fitness routine is based on 12 of the best-known ballroom and Latin dances, and was devised by pro-dancers Ian Waite and Natalie Lowe, stars of Strictly Come Dancing, the original UK version of Dancing With the Stars, together with Olympic swimmer Mark Foster, who danced with Hayley Holt on Strictly in 2008.
Morgan says the beauty of FitSteps is that it can be tailored to any fitness level and no partner is needed, so you only need to focus on what your own feet are doing.
“It’s a lot of fun,” she says. “In this current climate, I’m trying to encourage people to get out and do something and this is good for mental health and wellbeing, as well as fitness.”
She first brought FitSteps to Warkworth last year, when Women’s Centre Rodney sponsored four free trial classes at the Town Hall that went down a storm.
“They were jam-packed, we had up to 60 people turn up,” Morgan says.
She’s now returned to the Town Hall for a weekly FitSteps session every Thursday evening from 5.30pm to 6.30pm and, after a bit of a slow start, numbers are building as word gets around.
Each session costs $10, which Morgan says is a deliberate move to keep FitSteps as accessible as possible while the cost of living is so high.
As well as a dance teacher, Morgan is a certified neurolinguistic practitioner, life coach and contemporary yoga instructor. She is a passionate believer in dance as a holistic and therapeutic way to combine physical fitness with mental wellbeing, while reducing anxiety and stress, improving flexibility and strength, and cultivating a healthy balance between mind and body.
Her passion is prompted partly at least by her own experience of the benefits, after a head injury five years ago led her to pause her teaching to focus on her own recovery through yoga, movement and dance.
“The experience deepened my commitment to sharing the transformative power of dance with others, particularly those facing their own physical and emotional challenges,” she says.
Morgan has been dancing since begging her Mum for ballet lessons at the age of six and she worked for many years as a multi-genre dance and fitness instructor in the UK. She now runs classes in 11 different venues north of the Harbour Bridge and sincerely hopes to keep the Warkworth FitSteps sessions going.
“I love coming up, everyone really loves it up there,” she says. “I’m really trying to make this happen and will be offering other things like mini-retreats and group outings later on – we went to see Ballroom Blitz at the Bruce Mason Centre last year, which was great, and I’d like to go to the ballet at the end of this year.”
Info: Contact Helena on 022 882 0237 or email info@dancehaven.nz
