Dance and Fitness Concepts

A Personal History

Lisa-Anice Sutphen (Founder)

A Life Changing Idea

Working Fitness programs came as a result of a jacuzzi at the Y next door to the Pick School of Dance where I taught and trained in San Francisco. It was a great way to unwind those aching muscles at the end of teaching and training. One afternoon there,I saw a woman working with developmentally disabled adults, and volunteered to cover for her when she had need. And so it began, when she moved out of the country and I took over her three classes.

A background in working with populations at risk had me modifying the classes to address the two largest issues this population faces-trauma and communication. The end result was a series of lectures to day centers and observations from groups in the Pacific Rim companies that were looking for solutions to their complex social health issues. 

Then a letter from the offices of the First Lady of the State gave me an idea, and I started saying ‘dance’ at every opportunity I could manage at the Y.  Of course, the word ‘dance’ was accompanied by other terms-”fitness”, “restoration”, “Therapeutic”, “Sport”, “Art”...

Finally, in 2006, I was asked to demonstrate a format design for Presidio Middle School. 

I started teaching older adults, and worked as a facilitator on the Optimal Wellness Project, keeping older adults with disabilities out of 24 hour care. That program was vendorised, running for 2 years. 

In 2009, I taught a 12 week after school series to three groups of 4-6 year olds at the Davila Chinese Immersion School. Rumba/Cha-cha/ Chinese Tango were the subjects, interspersed with the team building of cultural dances. Changing the lesson every 5 minutes was the only way to keep complete chaos from taking over, and the final performance was absolutely wonderful.

Young Dancer Program

I moved to the Presidio location of the Y and taught all the older adult formats. I added personal training in 2010 with the ordinals of movement assessment: 7 swings, 3 planes of motion. In the spring of 2011, I was called to advise Norman Yee, VP of the San Francisco Unified School District for advise on how to expand a his project for 4th and 5th grade students.

I saw  4 schools dancing 5 dances( and not rightly) in a room packed to the rafters with screaming family and friends. My advise was to put his seed monies into After School programs.

The programs took off.  

And the next is a documentary made from the following season, the first with NGO as a partner.

We worked the program for two years, until Norman Yee ran for City Supervisor in San Francisco.

(Link to full documentary)

Over a period of 3 years I lobbied senators and representatives in all 50 states. as well as interested dance professionals to test the systems for the program I developed.  Rhode Island and Tennessee expressed interest in a program in every school district. In addition the following school districts expressed an interest in the program:

I petitioned  Lee Wakefield, President of the NDCA. I sent him copies of commendations from Maria Shriver as well as news articles regarding my work building programs for the developmental and intellectually disabled communities.

By the following summer of 2013, I found myself pulled onto online forums in front of world Dance leaders.  A number of people were of valuable assistance, from the organizer , Steven Robert Denter, held me break the Freedom to Dance Page to the Olympic medalist(4x over) in a separate sport who provided valuable advice in managing my social media.  During this time my social media followings grew  as well as interest in changing the business model of Dance.

Enhance Fitness

I submitted an outline for Enhance Fitness™  in June 2014 to the Y of the USA.

Three government studies revealed a 90% compliance rate by participants, as compared with the 56% compliance rate of the predominant program Silver Sneakers. Enhance Fitness™ is now in over 400 systems throughout the Y of the USA as of 2018.

For two years (2014-2015), one day dance based fitness festivals were presented on/near International Dance Day, to much success.

I also put together the outline for Bipedal Assessment Training on the J Spine.  This assessment training is a replacement for S-spine assessment that was rejected by the AMA in 2011 as being level 1  de-conditioning. This was based upon movement assessment backgrounds both learned as a DanceSport competitor and judge, as well as a life of work with those with a variety of developmental and physical disabilities. 

Presentation regarding Restorative Pilates/Yoga was given at the Marfan Foundation at both Stanford and Sloan-Kettering in June 2014. At the time of COVID, I was slated to present to the National Marfan Foundation in Boston July 11-13th 2020 on Ballroom and partner dances becoming approved physical activity for those with tissue and cardiovascular disorders.

From 2007-2019, I was a teacher in the Adult School programs for:

This was pursuant to a group project to convince CalState to offer degrees in Dance., which they began in Fall 2019.  As of now, those degrees are in Ballet and Modern dance,  Other dance styles will be added to the project as a result of continued work.