Fitness leader realizes dreams

Driving down Main Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, it is almost impossible not to notice the energy pulsing from M*POWER Center for Cultural Fitness. There is a distinct rhythm that emanates out of the storefront space of creative and physical expression for everyone in the Poughkeepsie community. Toni Llanos opened the center over three years ago with her husband Joe Llanos in the hopes of bringing to life the dream for their own space to provide these physical arts for the community. Today, M*POWER continues to thrive as an outlet for energy under Toni Llanos' leadership as co-Owner and Director of Dance and Fitness.

When Llanos started her Afro-Caribbean Fitness Dance class in 1996, she held it in various local gyms and other traveling locations in order to widen her audience and draw attention to the unique experience that she was offering. Years later, while teaching at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, her students turned the tables on a question that she had posed to the class: "What would you do if money wasn't an object?" She remembers being caught off guard. She responded from the heart, "I want a place where I can offer all kinds of cultural classes—dance, fitness and martial arts—bring in other people to share their art form and expose the community to all different kinds of cultural expressions." One year later, this dream became a reality.

M*POWER, which stands for Motivate*Pass On Wisdom and Education Responsibly, blends Afro-Caribbean Fitness and Martial Arts, houses a dance team and provides classroom space for other groups pursuing dance, yoga and movement exercises. It is driven by Llanos' distinct rhythm to build a holistic experience for all who enter. Each class that Llanos teaches opens and ends with a prayer, and those who take her classes benefit from her "use of music and dance as a form of spiritual release that helps them maintain balance." She maintains, "Our people [in the community] are lacking understanding. M*POWER provides full balance—in mind, body and spirit." It is this beautiful combination that continues to impact the lives her class participants and student members of the M*POWER Elite Dance Team.

Llanos strongly believes that God has played a role in making her dreams a reality, and her studio seeks to honor that role: "I have to remember that it couldn't happen without Him." The day she discovered the space on Main Street that would later become the home of M*POWER, she told her son Julian that they would know if it was meant to be. As the realtor showed them inside, she knew she had found her professional home in a newly refurbished space in the heart of downtown Poughkeepsie. "I couldn't believe that it was here, in the middle of all of this," she remembers. And three years later, Llanos maintains, "As much of a struggle as it is to be here—He [the Lord] wants us to be here."

M*POWER is more than a space for class offerings; it is a hub of youthful engagement, creativity and physical expression as a means for important social change for the Poughkeepsie community. The youth members of the dance group called the Elite Team rehearse almost every day of the week and perform at a variety of Poughkeepsie and Vassar College events. All of the youth involved learn to use dance as an outlet and, according to Llanos, as a "place where they can tap into their divine creativity." Llanos views the Team just as she views the Center, as both "a place for overall empowerment" and "a place for release."

While M*POWER may have been Llanos' dream, it extends far beyond her own ambitions. "I didn't want it to be about [me]," she said, "It's about what we're going to do here with children and families…I may be in front of the group leading, but I am still getting some kind of release. I am stable and healthy because of the Afro-Caribbean class."
Throughout the Afro-Caribbean class, Llanos reminds the participants to "challenge yourself, but only do what you can do. I am here to challenge you, but you know your body. Work at your level." It is the supportive atmosphere of M*POWER that keeps community members of all levels, ages, races and genders coming back for more personal and physical growth. "Thank yourself," Llanos says at the end of every class, for "taking the time in the day to work on you, and the body and mind."

To her students at SUNY New Paltz, she is "Mama;" to the youth on the M*POWER Elite Dance Team, she is "Miss Toni;" and to all who enter M*POWER, she is a nurturer of rhythmic love and a deep faith in the beauty of Poughkeepsie to grow and foster support for its youth. "The reason we do this," she says, "is just to plant the seed. Because it's possible: If you want it, you can achieve it."

—Erica Licht '10 is the Community Action Coordinator and will be writing community profiles this semester.