Fitness class for every taste at Dillon Gym

Assisted by rhythmic '80's dance beats blasting over loudspeakers, Ginny Mason demands more from her 12 leotard-clad, middle-aged female students. More arm-waving, more booty-bouncing, more hip-shaking. Think Fatboy Slim's music video for "Praise You."

Further into the class, when the routine involves more finger-snapping and shadowboxing, images of a graying West Side Story come to mind.

It's a lot of fluff, but that's sort of the point. Mason's lunchtime fitness class, "Low and Tone," is a low-impact, body-toning workout that uses stationary dance moves and is geared toward the weak-jointed. It draws mainly University faculty and mature townsfolk. Mason has been teaching the class for 25 years and proudly admits that she is approaching 60 herself.

The Department of Athletics offers a wide variety of programs at Dillon Gym, including aquatics (scuba diving and swimming), dance (ranging from social to belly), racquet sports, special interests (such as horseback riding and rifle shooting), spinning, self-defense, wellness and group fitness.

Anyone who is associated with the University or who has purchased a membership at Dillon is eligible to sign up. The professionally taught classes generally cost between $40 and $80 and include between four and 24 sessions.

Most importantly for overloaded Princeton students, classes run at all times of the day. Like many others, sophomore Nienke Boer said she simply attends whichever class fits her schedule.

The classes serve a variety of ends, whether that entails fitness, mental health or pursuit of a new skill.

Princeton faculty member Vito Badalamenti, for instance, enrolled in a Social Dance class because he "no longer wanted to be embarrassed at weddings and other social events."

For the more spiritually inclined, wellness classes such as Ashtanga Yoga promise full-body coordination and stimulation of both sides of the brain. At the instructor's beckoning, the students perform postures that imitate animals and structures — "temple arch," "bird," "downward-facing dog" — and straddle the fine line between the sensual and the just plain awkward.

The largest and most popular category of classes is group fitness, including "Boot Camp," "Wake up with Pilates," "Million Dollar Boxing," "Low and Tone," "Cardio Sculpt," "Kick, Jab & Abs," "Butts & Gutts" and "Step Jam." These classes are held in Dillon's second-floor multipurpose room.

"Step Jam" has a vibe similar to "Low and Tone." With two-stepping side to side as its bread and butter, the class also involves hopping, kicking, pivoting and simply going up and down an adjustable platform repeatedly. The participants are all young women — undergraduate and graduate students — who say they are attracted by the class' all-body workout.

The surround sound plays garish, but still catchy, house/new-wave hybrids: "Don't go breaking my heart/ 'Cause if you do, I'm gonna leave you again." It's music that simplifies love and makes repetitive aerobic workouts bearable.

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Meanwhile, "Butts and Gutts," a class with a cult following among young females, shows you "how to firm your fanny and flatten your belly over a full 50-minute workout," according to the Athletic Department's brochure.

Pete Carril, tennis coach?

Eric Stein, Associate Director of Athletics for Physical Education and Recreational Sports, explains that the program at Dillon is self-funded. The availability of classes is based on demand.

"We keep our ears open," Stein said. "We want to keep up with what is popular. For example, we introduced belly dancing a few years ago."

Though classes are now based entirely on student interest, it wasn't always so: Princeton once required students to take two physical education classes to graduate. The rule was dropped in 1992 in response to the administration's reluctance to enforce it, but not before several campus celebrities got involved.

Brooke Shields '87 requested to teach a basic level aerobics class to fulfill her requirement her senior year.

"Everybody had to go through security to attend her class. But it still filled up pretty quickly. And we had an inordinate amount of guys coming out," Stein said. "She actually sprained her ankle in one of the classes. The trainer who got the chance to tape her ankle was thanking me for years after that."

Shields was not the only well-known instructor. Coaches of varsity teams were required to instruct classes as part of their jobs — and they didn't always teach classes on their area of expertise.

As a result, in 1983, students in Beginner Level Tennis learned to split-step and move the racquet from legendary men's basketball head coach Pete Carril.

These days, though neither Lauren Bush '06 nor men's basketball head coach Joe Scott '87 will be teaching a class at Dillon anytime soon, the health and fitness program remains an immensely popular sanctuary from academic life.