Dance is great for your health in more ways than one. Phys­i­cal­ly, it keeps you as fit as a fid­dle. It is one of the on­ly Sports (yes, be­cause dancers are ath­letes) that en­gages the en­tire body all of the time. While pas­sion makes a dancer great, a strong core al­so helps. It aids in ac­cu­rate weight dis­tri­b­u­tion which re­duces the risk of in­jury when danc­ing in heels. Men­tal­ly, it keeps the brain sharp by im­prov­ing cog­ni­tive learn­ing as one is re­quired to re­mem­ber chore­og­ra­phy by do­ing it re­peat­ed­ly when per­form­ing in the class. The bonds made in the class can al­so im­prove mood through so­cial­i­sa­tion. Last­ly, it holds emo­tion­al ben­e­fits as well since the phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty of dance rais­es your heart rate and so too, the re­lease of en­dor­phins (the feel-good hor­mones)

Danc­ing, alone, is a skill. Danc­ing in heels takes it up a notch as it takes a great amount of prac­tice to mas­ter this art. You may have seen #Heel­ingQueens pop­u­lat­ing your so­cial me­dia feeds re­cent­ly as we are fresh on the heels of cel­e­brat­ing two years in ex­is­tence. Hap­py Birth­day to us! We could not be more ex­cit­ed for what we have ac­com­plished thus far and we are stoked to con­tin­ue forg­ing on with these good works.

Dancer, teacher and men­tor Kather­ine ‘Katie C’ Car­rera is the epit­o­me of “...and though she be but lit­tle, she is fierce.” When seen in re­al life, peo­ple are mar­velled at how tiny she is in com­par­i­son to see­ing her on cam­era. Catch­ing up with her rev­el­ling in yet an­oth­er pro­fes­sion­al ac­com­plish­ment, Katie ad­mit­ted that her goal was al­ways to “im­pact women’s lives pos­i­tive­ly by holis­ti­cal­ly cre­at­ing and har­ness­ing bonds be­tween the woman you see in the mir­ror and the oth­er women in class.” She added, “Feel­ing sexy is a by-prod­uct of be­ing con­fi­dent and Heel­ing Queens was cre­at­ed to give women the plat­form to dis­cov­er and un­leash their fem­i­nine side and to ex­plore and strength­en their in­di­vid­ual voic­es through move­ment with­out fear of judge­ment.”

Al­though a lit­tle over two years ago, Kate was teach­ing com­mer­cial style class­es and ex­pressed how much she want­ed to teach in heels as well. I fig­ure you can guess my re­sponse be­cause here we are two years lat­er. “Start!” I said to her, “You have the ex­pe­ri­ence and the knowl­edge. You’ve learnt from the best and the lo­cal dance com­mu­ni­ty will ben­e­fit from it.” Of course, there was some hes­i­ta­tion with fol­low-up ques­tions, but I re­mind­ed her that she would def­i­nite­ly get sup­port and the im­pact would be long-reach­ing, even if not im­me­di­ate­ly.

Her dream ex­pand­ed as she in­clud­ed a few of her long-time stu­dents (and friends) to teach as well. Each of us from vary­ing dance back­grounds, ver­sa­tile in our own right.

Eva-Maria Flus ad­mit­ted that, “Heel­ing Queens is noth­ing less than a move­ment of em­pow­er­ment, lib­er­a­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty through the art of dance. It is uni­ty, and that makes it pow­er­ful”. She is an avid sal­sa dancer with a keen eye for de­tail and arm flair.

Ka­cy is a gym­nast who slays hip hop. She in­sist­ed, “The amaz­ing women I met in the Heel­ing Queens ex­pe­ri­ence had such a pos­i­tive im­pact on my life and who I am as a per­son. This is a safe space of women’s em­pow­er­ment through phys­i­cal, men­tal and emo­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. You have to ex­pe­ri­ence it to un­der­stand.”

Heel­ing Queens rep­re­sents some­thing big­ger than I my­self as I main­ly iden­ti­fy with the con­tem­po­rary style as I was ini­tial­ly trained in Bal­let, Mod­ern and Jazz at the Caribbean School of Danc­ing. It has grown to high­light the re­silience of women from vary­ing back­grounds and the strength that is found with­in and around us in our fem­i­nin­i­ty. This is not just about women feel­ing sexy, strong and con­fi­dent, if you’ve ever want­ed to em­brace the woman in you through dance, heel­ing queens is a great place to start.

Za­kiya Tuere-Savary is a pro­fes­sion­al dancer and dance in­struc­tor. Dance is her first love and a con­stant in her life. As a dancer, she iden­ti­fies with strength com­ing from ver­sa­til­i­ty. Be­ing able to share her knowl­edge and cre­ativ­i­ty through teach­ing is noth­ing short of a bless­ing.