The Right Move: Lifelong love of dance eventually led to a new career

While growing up, one of Cortney Wilson's favorite things to do was to go into her bedroom, blast the radio and dance. She worked out the moves she saw on TV shows and in music videos, too -- copying Paula Abdul, the Fly Girls from In Living Color, pretty much everything off Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814.

Wilson knew the dance divas of the 1990s inside and out. She soaked up every head tilt and every turn.

Wilson, 30, teaches dance-based exercise classes at Winston-Salem's Central YMCA and at the Rush fitness center in High Point. She's also the owner of FiF Element (Fitness is Fun!), a mobile fitness company that brings workouts to churches, businesses and other organizations.

Wilson didn't take dance classes as a child, or belong to a gym. Cheerleading and dance team were out, too. She is a Jehovah's Witness, and her parents were deeply religious. "The outfits, you know my father, was like, that skirt is 2 inches long. They were very protective," Wilson said.

Wilson grew up in Charlotte, the youngest of four kids. She remembers her mother working out to Gilad Janklowicz's television show Bodies in Motion. Wilson thought that her mom, with her leg-warmers and leotard, looked like a black Jane Fonda, and she joined her. "I would last all of 10 minutes. But that was such a happy time for me."

She wanted to be a choreographer. Her parents steered her toward something they thought was more practical, so when she started college at Winston-Salem State University, she tried out psychology, then English, then mass communications. She loved writing and liked the fast pace of journalism.

She also started working out with her boyfriend, Jersey, at the Central YMCA. Working out was a way to relieve stress, and when she graduated in 2001 and spent the summer in a journalism program at the Poynter Institute in Florida, she would go to nearby dance clubs, too.

By the fall, she was working at the Salisbury Post as a health and human-services reporter. And there, again, she found dance, at the opening of a new YMCA, where she interviewed Ester March, an associate executive and the health and fitness director.

Out of curiosity, Wilson asked Marsh, how do you become an aerobics teacher? Wilson was taking hip-hop exercise classes in Charlotte, and loving it.

It turned out Marsh wanted instructors. She trained Wilson in group instruction -- how to lead a class and keep it going.

Wilson could dance, but she also understood teaching, Marsh said. "She had just extremely natural instincts. With a little bit of guidance from me it just exploded. She was just one of those people who can teach anything."

By then, Wilson was looking for a way to get out of newspaper reporting. She landed a job at her alma mater and moved back to Winston-Salem in 2005, working at WSSU's marketing and communications office, where she eventually became editor of the alumni magazine.

She kept teaching, leading kick-boxing, Latin-influenced Zumba and other dance-based fitness classes at the Central YMCA. It was a way to stay in shape. "When you're teaching, you have to be there," she said. "But then when I got there, I loved it."

Dance is what Wilson calls "exercise in disguise," she said. "You're getting fit, you're getting healthy at the same time. It's an escape for people."

Wilson started FiF Element in 2007. By late 2008, she quit WSSU to run her business full time. She also writes press releases and handles media and marketing through events through her other company, Media Journey.

In March, she will offer more classes at Positive Image Performing Arts Studio, including masala bhangra, an Indian-based dance workout. Wilson is a marketer's marketer -- she persuaded Sarina Jain, the big-name Indian-American who created masala bhangra, to visit Winston-Salem and certify instructors. When the recent snow forced her to cancel a master's class with Jain, Wilson started sending out press releases before the storm hit about a make-up date (It's Feb. 20 at the Central YMCA). And she didn't let the storm stop her from practicing masala bhangra at Positive Image, rehearsing with other women for a local television appearance.

The girl who wanted to be a choreographer has ended up a woman doing something an awful lot like that. "God knows everyone's heart," she said. "He knows what our passions are. He knows what's not."

Some of Wilson's students say that her classes are popular for a reason: There are few rules about what moves are right and wrong, and in a world where many of us have a love-hate relationship with both our bodies and exercise, it's a workout where play and music are priorities.

"So many things are stressing people out. Some people just want to dance. It takes them away from whatever got on their nerves that day," Wilson said.

"Whatever happened to your day, just let it go," she told a recent evening Zumba class at the YMCA, leading a studio full of women, all shapes and ages -- and a few men -- to the clang of steel drums, followed by reggaeton and capped with a remix of C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)." You can take the girl out of the 1990s …

"Cortney's got the glow. She's got the charisma," said Monica Barajas, one of Wilson's longtime students. "This is like my fun workout, my time to be silly, and then I go home feeling happy."

lgiovanelli@wsjournal.com

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