Things to Do in Calabasas

Over its 13 years of friendly and professional service, Mark Blanchard's Power Yoga has developed a loyal base of students who are known to the staff by name, even without nametags or name tattoos. The motivating instructors teach a form of Vinyasa yoga, a style defined by flowing, powerful movements in combination with strategic breathing patterns and techniques. Power yoga beefs up the traditional by increasing the athleticism like a post-spinach Popeye. Sessions stretch muscles and relax the mind, while providing an excellent fat-burning cardio workout—preparing participants mentally and physically for the rise of cloned dinosaurs. With an unlimited class pass, you will be able to sweat, stretch, and strengthen to your limbs' content for one entire month. Students of all skill levels are welcome to join the classes, which are conveniently scheduled at multiple times throughout each day.

The Skirball Cultural Center is a renowned museum, vibrant performing arts center, and prestigious educational institution that is dedicated to sustaining Jewish heritage while welcoming visitors of all ethnic and cultural identities. Members get unlimited year-round access to museum exhibits, including Noah's Ark. The popular interactive gallery inside a massive wooden ark is filled with animal puppets (made from recycled materials) and hours worth of creative, challenging activities for kids of every shoe size, all aimed at teaching the value of community and sustainability without having to live among Himalayan monks for seven years. Children must be accompanied by an adult, and members should call ahead to schedule a timed entry or book online.

As a child in Buenos Aires, Angel Echeverria would sit on the porch of his family home and watch his aunt and uncle dance the tango. Music often spilled into the streets of his neighborhood, where many tango musicians lived. By the time he was a teenager in the early 1960s, Angel began studying the tango himself, and nearly 50 years later he founded The Tango Room Dance Center with Julie Friedgen. Like Angel, Julie grew up watching her parents’ Argentine friends dance tango at parties, and eventually became a ballet and flamenco dancer. Though she didn’t begin learning the tango until 13 years ago, once she started she immediately knew it was the dance to which she would devote the rest of her life.

Not surprisingly, The Tango Room is dedicated to the Argentine style of dance; many of the instructors hail from Argentina and lead classes in traditional, contemporary, waltz, and milonga variations. On Saturday nights the school transforms into El Encuentro—which translates to “the encounter”—a fast-paced dance party modeled after the tango clubs of Buenos Aires. Beyond tango, the school also hosts classes in salsa, belly dance, and R & B line dancing as well as Zumba and bujinkan, a Japanese martial art.

A pumpkin can pep up a pie, transform into a jack-o'-lantern, or fill in for you at work, and each fall, Toluca Lake Pumpkin Patch stocks an ample supply of this versatile squash. The staff also celebrates the harvest season with a maze in which monsters and spooky displays chill visitors' spines. Once fall transforms into winter, the patch turns its attention to selling Christmas trees such as douglas firs and custom wreaths to hang on doors. Regardless of the season, visitors can meet goats, rabbits, and sheep at an onsite petting zoo or pick up a bouquet from Toluca Lake Florist, which has supplied cut flowers for more than 60 years.

During a video feature for Warp Factor 2, Vanessa Giorgio summed up the problem that led to her studio's creation: "I couldn't get my spinners to calm down, and I couldn't get my yoga students to hype up." The personal trainer founded Lotus Kitty Yoga and Power Cycling to hybridize the two workouts, thereby creating a rounded fitness regimen for the body and mind.

Inside the studio, her power-cycling instructors contribute vigorous cardio work during their 45-minute classes. They prompt riders to pedal at varying resistances, which mimic outdoor conditions such as hills and fields full of prairie-dog holes, then end each lesson with sit-ups and pushups. Yoga teachers lead posing sequences that change weekly to prevent muscle boredom. They are often designed to address the tightness and stress that accompany power cycling.

Students can merge 30-minute stretches of the two routines into power cycling/yoga classes or learn Pilates and barre techniques in the second half of power cycling/total body. In addition to its group curriculum, the studio hosts private training sessions and six-week Kat Camps.