T<\/span>he COVID-19 crisis has older adults worried about what might happen to their health if they get too close to others. But ballroom dance professionals are worried about what might happen to older adults\u2019 health if they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n To keep people dancing while staying home, Fred Astaire Dance Studios<\/a> around the country have launched free ballroom dance lessons online. Ballroom dance professionals from around the country, including Dancing with the Stars legend Tony Dovolani, have contributed their expertise to the online studio with hundreds of dance lessons for people of all skill levels.<\/p>\n \u201cFor so many of our older adult students, ballroom dancing at our studio was their primary form of exercise,\u201d said Alex Aramos, owner of the Fred Astaire Dance Studios \u2013 Lake Houston in Atascocita, Texas. \u201cWe want to make sure they can keep dancing while staying connected with us.\u201d<\/p>\n Dovolani, the co-national dance director for Fred Astaire Dance Studios,<\/a> said taking virtual dance lessons is a terrific way to burn some energy and shake off some of the nervousness that\u2019s come from the COVID-19 crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody that\u2019s been home for a few weeks can be getting a little restless,\u201d Dovolani said. \u201cWhat better way to get rid of some of that anxiety than to dance?\u201d<\/p>\n For decades, ballroom dancing has been acknowledged by the health and wellness community as a terrific activity for older adults. Along with keeping their minds and bodies fit, ballroom dance studios provide a much-needed community for older adults who are often at risk of suffering from loneliness and depression.<\/p>\n Not to mention the famous 2003 Einstein Aging Study<\/a>, which found ballroom dancing to be the one activity that may reduce the risk of dementia. Researchers determined that several factors, including learning the steps, moving with a partner, and moving to music all contributed to their findings.<\/p>\n \u201cAdults choose ballroom dancing as a regular form of exercise for all different reasons,\u201d said Albina Habrle, regional director for Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Arizona. \u201cBut certainly, the opportunity to keep their minds and memories fit ranks very high.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond the Einstein Aging Study, activities such as ballroom dancing hold other important health benefits for older adults.<\/p>\n \u25cf A recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that older adults who engage in even low-level exercise for at least three hours per week can increase their life expectancy by as much as five years over sedentary older adults.<\/p>\n \u25cf Several studies collected by the University of California, Berkeley, show that ballroom dancing improved older adults\u2019 balance, gait, walking speed, and reaction time, as well as cognitive and fine motor performance.<\/p>\n \u25cf Researchers at the University of Illinois recently discovered that learning how to dance slows the degeneration of white matter in the brain associated with aging. That\u2019s because dancing requires people to learn and master new choreography, which keeps the brain\u2019s processing speed and memory fired up.<\/p>\n Fred Astaire Dance Studios has a website containing a full library of dance instruction, free of charge. People are asked to create an account to access the videos and browse the library.<\/p>\n Videos feature tutorials on exercises to do to help your dancing form, fun dances to lift your spirits, and traditional ballroom and Latin dance styles ranging from swing to salsa.<\/p>\n Fred Astaire Dance Studios owners around the country are excited to offer older adults the chance to dance while waiting for stay-at-home regulations to subside and are hopeful they will want to continue dancing at one of their local dance studios when normal operations resume.<\/p>\n \u201cVirtual dance lessons are great, but nothing beats joining your friends and loved ones for a fun night at the dance studio,\u201d Habrle said. \u201cAll of us at Fred Astaire Dance Studios are counting the days until we can see everyone again.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep dancing while distancing with online dance lessons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10036,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2020","category-spring-summer-2020-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9983"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10321,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983\/revisions\/10321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Finding Their Groove<\/h3>\n
How To Dance From a Distance<\/h3>\n
Matt DeMargel, Contributor, Fred Astaire Dance Studios<\/a>.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"