Fitness

MAYBE it was the 14 live performances of “Forever Tango” I watched breathlessly during my college job as theater usher. Or the influence of the recent rash of dance-obsessed reality shows -- ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” TLC’s “Ballroom Bootcamp” and Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Whatever the impetus, I decided to take a ballroom dancing class. Which is how I ended up standing around awkwardly in Caltech’s Winnett Lounge with about 100 engineering students and professors, all eager to learn some fancy footwork.

My choreographic experience was limited to my childhood gymnastics career and, as I got older, daily step aerobics classes. In fact, I’ve been a devotee of aerobics since it was considered cool to don a thong leotard over neon leggings.

But with ballroom dancing touted as the newest exercise trend, I thought I’d give it a whirl. The U.S. Amateur Ballroom Dancers Assn. professes that frequent ballroom dancing will “build and maintain your physical stamina to a level equal to that of avid athletes.” A study in the New England Journal of Medicine contended that dancing delays dementia. Not to be left out, faculty at the Ohio State University conducted experiments with results suggesting that any exercise set to music boosts brain power.

Maybe it wasn’t such a leap to be at Caltech for a dance class. The university --who knew?-- has a large and active Ballroom Dance Club that’s open to the public. Once a year, it runs Ballroom Boot Camp, a crash course in six different styles -- East Coast swing and Ceroc, tango and cha-cha, and waltz and rumba -- over three nights in one week.

As I waited with the other sneaker-clad newbies, a couple leapt into a gap in the crowd and began twirling maniacally, throwing back their heads and moving their feet way faster than any of us could follow, much less imitate. Many of us squirmed uncomfortably. Some glanced longingly at the exit.

Fred and Ginger, it turned out, weren’t our fellow students, but our teacher and her demonstration partner.

When the music stopped, the female dancer, Megan Ferguson, took charge of the room. She lined us up into five rows of women facing men. “This is a rock step,” said Ferguson, a 27-year-old doctoral student and former dance club president. She moved one foot back, shifted her weight, and then brought it forward again. Simple enough. Soon Ferguson was calling out moves while demonstrating increasingly complicated series of steps.

“Rock step, triple step, rock step!”

“Everyone, left to right hand hold, then turn!”

The rapid-fire commands might not have been so difficult if we weren’t changing partners every two minutes. Learn the comb, change your partner. This is the neckbreak, change your partner. Add the hesitation, change your partner. It was like speed-dating with toe-stepping.

Every time I thought I was comfortable with a step, my next partner would throw me off; or, more likely, I’d throw him off. The appealing symmetry of ballroom dancing, which looks so effortless? Ha. A hard-won illusion.

By the end of the three-hour class, the lively swing music was on and we were all dancing -- though only nominally the steps we’d just learned. There was a slight descent into chaos, but it was a pleasant chaos, in which we had only a loose grasp of what we were doing but were having fun nonetheless.

When I chatted with Ferguson afterward, she gushed, “Dancing’s just such a rush, especially when you’re in sync with the other person.”

Yes, perhaps that’s what I’d lacked: synchronicity.

I had danced with nearly 50 partners, and not one performed the same move in exactly the same way. That kept things interesting but frustrating. Competitive dancers and figure skaters tend to stay loyal to one counterpart for the duration of their careers, and I can see why. They need the consistency to progress.

I did get two reliable pieces of feedback from my many partners: “Slow down” and “Follow my lead.”

Oops. Too many years of fast-paced, self-sufficient step aerobics. And too strong a desire to break a sweat.

Despite all the claims I’d heard about ballroom dance being such great exercise, my heart rate was only what it usually is after a minor bout of household chores. My cheeks were slightly flushed, but that might have been more from embarrassment than exertion. None of the rock-step, triple-step combos taught that night were enough for me to consider this the cardio workout I crave. Maybe if I could have executed the steps with Ferguson’s masterful speed, I might have had to wipe my brow.

But until dancers-in-training reach that stage, they should have some other way to keep fit and trim. If not, they may wind up with unwanted bulge beneath their ball gowns.

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Shall we dance?

Caltech Ballroom Dance Club, various buildings on the campus at 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena; www.its.caltech.edu/ballroom. A listing of scheduled events and class times in Pasadena. Open to the public. For more information, call Cecilia Yu at (936) 4435019.

Ballroom is Back! Dance Studio, 2980 McClintock Way, Unit C, Costa Mesa; (714) 641-3188, www.ballroomisback.com. Classes held several times a week. New student special: six lessons for $35, or 10 group classes for $65. Private lessons also available.

L.A. Dance Experience, 1941 Westwood Blvd., Westwood; (310) 475-1878, www.ladanceexperience.com. Classes at varying skill levels offered three times a week in Westwood. Private lessons also available.