When you dance, you forget you're working out, which is preferable to when you work out and forget you're dancing, resulting in airborne free weights and OK Go music videos. For $20, today's Groupon gets you five Zumba classes at Flair Dance Studio in Cantonsville, a $40 value. The classes, offered Mondays and Fridays from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., whittle and whip a shapely physique via body-energizing movements that don't require Iron Man–style heart batteries.

Created in the mid-90s by Colombia native and celebrity fitness trainer Alberto Perez, Zumba blends salsa, samba, and merengue music together like a frothy cocktail of multi-sensory bliss. Classes at Flair are taught by a certified instructor and are designed for skill sets of all levels. Each move is broken down and explained, making it easy to jump on the floor at any time. A variety of fast and slow interval training sessions combine rhythm with resistance for maximum calorie blasting, leaving just a few alive to return to their caloric villages and instruct survivors to flee.

Owner Willia Bland opened Flair Studio in 1968 to uplift the community after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The Cantonsville studio's weekly Zumba sessions carry on Bland's initial aim to unite community and boost self-confidence through movement. Get this Groupon to tone up for spring, to showcase some unexpected new skills on the dance floor, or as an upbeat alternative to the treadmill, since running in place on the dance floor is no longer fashionable.

Reviews

Flair Dance aficionados have yet to boogie toward their computers to write online reviews, but critics across the country are enthusing over Zumba classes. The Today Show, New York Times, and CNN extol the exercise:

• A session of Zumba, a cardio-dance routine, can feel like a trip to the nightclub of a cruise ship, where a well-toned crew member teaches you to wiggle your hips and do the fast footwork for a mix of dance styles to the thump of loud music. While Zumba crowds are not plied with alcohol, people often throw away inhibitions — they pump their arms, applaud, let out “yeahs” — as they work out. – Mireya Navarro, New York Times
• Lilieth Burke, 48, of Alpharetta [in Georgia] started attending Zumba classes a year ago and kept coming back because she appreciated "the simple composition of dance moves." Unlike other exercise workouts she's tried, "Zumba is not a punishment," she said. Burke summed up the benefits: "I feel fit, I sleep better, I feel better, I feel younger, and I feel I can live another 48 years." – Judy Fortin, CNN