Dancer's Loft, a Wallingford Business That is 'All About Destressing'

Perhaps you had a tad too much eggnog over the holidays — and now those skinny jeans, let alone sweatpants, no longer fit? Do the short days of January strike you as uninspiring and bleak? Then, the Dancer’s Loft, which is scheduled to open this month, may offer the combination of fitness and the arts you crave.

“My passion has always been dance,” said Wallingford native Anne Cicia, who owns and will serve as artistic director at the Loft.

Cicia’s global adventures in dance include performing in such locales as New York and London, Dublin and Hong Kong, although she said she started dancing in various styles — ballet, tap and jazz among them — in Wallingford as a small child.

While travelling with a professional dance group from Boston through remote villages in China, she said she witnessed “huge billboards of our dance group.”  These were audiences, she said, who had never seen Americans and never seen persons with blonde hair.

“They were screaming at us as if we were the Beatles,” she said.

After college, where she majored in travel, and a work exchange program in Greece as well as stints in Chicago and Boston, she returned to Wallingford to marry and start a family. With her son Nicholas now off at school, she is launching what she terms her city-style studio this month with its grand opening scheduled for February.

According to Cicia, the Dancer’s Loft will offer classes and also individual and small group tutoring.  

The classes will include a body sculpt class over the noon hour for persons who spend their days at the office. She said she chose body sculpt, which is a non-aerobic and muscle-toning form of exercise, “so that it’s not high impact cardiac where the class is going to get sweaty — it’s stretching, stress relief, a nice addition to the day.”

“I’m all about de-stressing,” said Cicia, who, prior to the Loft, taught part-time from the basement of her home.    

The schedule at the Dancer’s Loft includes the Bootcamp class (push-ups, sit-ups, running, a lot of lunges) as well as classes in pilates, an exercise designed to loosen and tone. Cicia’s Zumba class will incorporate a number of different styles, merging Bollywood and hip hop with the typically Latin-inspired routine. She will offer classes targeted at Baby Boomers and those she terms the "Silver Sneakers," among others.  

Cicia seems to have a penchant for clients that other fitness studios might exclude.

In addition to customizing sessions for “heavier people that do not feel
comfortable going into a full class” (and men, this includes you), Cicia said
she has developed special movement classes for autistic children to help them release their energy.

“Mini-muses” is the term she used to describe them.

And for mothers who choose not to join their children in her “Mommy and Me”  class, her spacious, 1,200 sq. ft. studio will accomodate a “kiddie corner,” replete with Legos and other toys to occupy children while mother works out.

Given her artistic circle of friends, she will broaden the activities her studio
offers to include special sessions on voice, keyboard and, as part of her nutritional coaching, cooking that is gluten-free. Guilford resident Lisa Lelas, the declutterer of space and time, will also stop by.

What matters to Cicia is that the Dancer’s Loft not intimidate.  “ ...very friendly, open, warm, non-intimidating, non-competitive,” she said of the Loft.  She thought back to the fierce competition at New York dance auditions and declared that the environment at the Dancer’s Loft would
have none of it.

“I really think I was put on this earth to help people,” she observed. 

For a complete list of classes and fees, including her “drop-in” and “pay-as-you-go” rates, Cicia asked that interested persons contact her at 203-213-0282.

The business is located at 221 South Colony St. Visit the website at www.dancersloft.com.