Not all the city's ballet is in its theaters, nor all the jazz in its bars and clubs. At many of Shanghai's mushrooming fitness centers, these and other activities are offered to would-be get-fitters.
Ballet, says Ding Ning, head coach at Megafit on Huaihai Road, can be gentler on the muscles than the conventional forms of exercise.
"It works by gently pulling the muscles," Ding says. "It also makes people pay more attention to posture, bringing fitness without increasing muscle bulk. And that's ideal for the slim Asian figure."
But as any professional ballet dancer will testify, ballet is an arduous pastime, demanding long hours of rigorous practice.
That's why the ballet courses offered in local gyms are tailored to amateurs. One of the most basic ballet positions, en pointe - standing on tiptoe - is all but banned during the first two months of classes, lest students sprain their ankles. And complex moves are never used.
"But we retain various well-known ballet plots, so our course eases both body and mind," Ding says.
Elsewhere jazz is the order of the day, and though it's more casual than ballet it requires a keener sense of rhythm.
Zhu Qianyi is a jazz dance coach at the Yalei Shaping Studio on Jiangning Road. Though she is 30 years old, she looks more like a woman in her early 20s. She attributes her youthful looks to dancing - a claim all the more impressive given that she gave birth just six months ago.
"A month of dancing has restored me to good shape," she says, adding that jazz dancing helps shape the body in the waist and hips.
"Rhythmically swinging the waist, gyrating the hips, bending forward and backward will gradually take off excess fat," she said.
However, many people hesitate to take up jazz dancing due to the frenetic shows they've seen on stage and television. But for Zhu, jazz is better than ballet because jazz students avoid some of the more difficult moves, and doing so takes nothing away from the overall routine, thanks to the free-form nature of the genre.
"A thirty degree kick or a ninety degree kick in jazz dancing are equally attractive," says Zhu. "And both offer the same benefits in trimming fat."
Jostling for space with ballet and jazz is another routine - tap dancing. Though it was highly popular on Chinese MTV during the late 1980s, it's only recently that it has been taken up by keep-fit fiends.
But its practitioners, both professional and amateur, give differing answers as to the nature of the beat. They treat it more than just a form of dancing - to them, it's a form of self-expression.
Yao Zhiwei, a 26-year-old public relations manager, is a tap dancing aficionado. And though there are no formal tap-dancing classes in the city - something she complains about - she and a group of like-minded friends meet every week at the Shanghai Stadium.
Yao says tap dancing should not place too much emphasis on the steps, for that tends to obscure the pleasure. The two vital elements of tap, improvisation and rhythm, have their origin in West Africa, Yao says, but there are no hard-and-fast rules.
A tap step is pivoted from the knee, rocking the foot from the heel to toe.
"It's rather like trotting," says Yao, adding that it helps shape the leg particularly well.
Back at the Yalei Shaping Studio, Zhu Qianyi, experienced in all three forms of dance, says that tap is the easiest in them. It takes six months to get the basics of ballet, and half that for jazz - but tap can be picked up in a single month.
These three forms of dance, though most enjoyable in a group, can also be done alone. But for Latin-American ballroom dance, group attendance is mandatory.
Xia Youqing, who teaches ballroom dancing in Megafit, explains that though this is a group activity, each member of the team performs the same moves, meaning it's suitable for individuals. But, Xia explains, it is necessary to have a teacher on hand as well as the right music, because "if you dance to the wrong kind of music, you not only look awkward but you are also prone to aches and pains."
Xia says that a pair of good ballroom dancing shoes can help people master the correct moves. The shoes, though similar to a high-heel, are made of ox tendon, and help the dancer draw back, throw out the leg and cope with the muscle tension that the dancing creates.
"But whichever style of dance you go for, you should throw your whole self into it," says Zhang Jian, a sports science professor at the Shanghai Sports Institute. "That's the way to train your body and mind."
(Eastday.com 05/18/2001)
