The Paradise Center hosts FitFest on Longboat Key

For several people, it was their first time swaying in time with music, imitating rain and the sun and the sea with their hands as they moved their feet in the motion of hula. And for many of those people, it wouldn't be the last. About 30 people attended The Paradise Center's FitFest on Feb. 4 and tried out seven exercise classes, including Debbie White's hula class. 

"It was my first time at The Paradise Center," Peep Brereton said. "I'm going to come back and hula dance. It'll be completely new." 

Executive Director Suzy Brenner organized teachers into 15-minute increments and kept them all on schedule with bite-sized bouts of movement. Classes included Zumba, Pilates, Stretch and Strengthen, hula, tai chi, qi gong and meditation. This is the first time Brenner organized the event at The Paradise Center's building, but it had been done four years ago at the organization's Longboat Island Chapel home and two years ago at Temple Beth Israel. 

"We have a lot of people who just come for one or two things and assume they wouldn't like hula or zumba," Brenner said. "This way it kind of forces them to try things." 

About half of the attendees were nonmembers, including several people Brenner said she didn't recognize. Several people who had only come to play mahjong before put on their comfiest, stretchiest clothes for FitFest and even people who said they would come sit and watch classes got pulled into participating by the infectious energy in The Paradise Center's parking lot. 

"It can be intimidating to go to a new place, no matter how old you are, so this is a good way to try something new," Brenner said. 

She led three classes herself, while Debbie White led hula, Sandi Love led qi gong and meditation, and Reuben Fernandez led tai chi. Cutting down their classes to fit into 15-minute increments was difficult, because each instructor wanted to highlight the best parts of their practice while still doing it properly. 

"It takes a lot of thought," Fernandez said. "What I think is that people think about tai chi classes as a choreography of movements, or what we call our flow, so I thought that's what I'll focus on."