Daniel Novasio is a bit a of a celebrity around the RAPRD Activity Center. Before his dance fitness classes, he takes the time to warm up, first in the lobby of the Activity Center, and then, once the instructor arrives to unlock the door, inside the gym. While the rest of the participants stand around in groups of two or three, stretching and chatting, Daniel is 100% into his music. He has his headphones on and is leading a one-man concert, lip synching along with the music and loosening up for his energetic MIXxedFit® class by doing the hip hop moves in time to country music – Florida Georgia Line today. “Music is my thing,” he says more than once during our interview. “Country, yeah I love country a lot.”
He humors me and poses for a couple joking photos with his instructor before class, but doesn’t take off those headphones. He is focused, serious… or so I think, until I try to take a candid shot of him working a rhythmic swagger across the gym floor and he turns straight to the camera and strikes a hip hop pose with a devious grin at the exact moment I snap the picture. He looks like he’s warming up in his own world – and also silently trying out on stage on The Voice. But Daniel has a sixth sense for when he’s in the frame and can find the camera wherever it is in the room to mug a bit or give a quick, confident (cheeky) chin nod just when I think he’s not looking.
He was not always this confident, this free. When he moved to Redmond two years ago and started coming to RAPRD to work out, he says “I was nervous. Didn’t know anyone.” He had wrestled in high school, in Beaverton, so strength training was nothing new, but joining a dance class full of outgoing, high-energy women was a little intimidating at first. Still, Daniel was curious. “I did karaoke all the time in Beaverton,” he explains, so the music drew him in, and once he started, “I was so happy. I have this energy.” His first class was MIXxedFit® with Heather, a hip-hop influenced dance-based fitness class. It was perfect. “I dance in my heart,” Daniel says, “That’s what I do. It’s my thing.”
It is definitely his thing. Daniel has progressed to where he leads the class on some songs and when the group circles up, Daniel takes the floor at the center to perform a solo that makes it clear, he not only loves to dance, this guy has serious skills. He has an intuitive feel for the music, but his moves are also physically rigorous, and the energy with which he can bust out a routine demonstrates the strength and flexibility he has gained from taking fitness classes nearly every day since he moved to town. In addition to Heather’s MIXxedFit® class, he also takes Zumba and Balance & Core classes. Daniel has carved out a place for himself at RAPRD, and in Redmond. “Beaverton is my old home,” he says. “Redmond is my future.”
As the second song wraps up and the class re-forms in neat lines – with Daniel again at the front – he’s grinning and has barely broken a sweat. He obviously loves being able to do something he’s great at, and that others recognize him for, but what he seems to value most about his classes at RAPRD is the independence he feels here. Daniel lives with his parents, a big family and his llasa apso, and works for his mom helping ride, clean up after, and care for the horses that the family boards. But RAPRD is Daniel’s space alone. He gets dropped off and his parents rarely come inside. “Dad has always taken care of me,” he says, “but now I take care of me.”
He values having his workout time as his own time, whether he spends it in a group class, or lifting weights. Freedom is very important to Daniel. “I can go slow, or I can go fast, do my thing. Sometimes I get more energy and work out really hard.” He uses the weight room at the Activity Center sparingly now that he has joined so many classes, but he emphasizes, “I work out independently myself. I do weights at home.” When describing his favorite aspects of his classes at RAPRD, he says “New friends. I dance and have a good time,” but even in the group class context, Daniel expresses his independence and creativity. “I take the moves and I make my own moves,” he says.
Daniel adds in a dab of his own
Daniel feels music deeply, as an ancient, inner part of who he is, even going back to his childhood. “Dad and I used to sing the ABCs together when I was a little boy,” he says. “Now I have the words to every song in my head. Like 200 songs.” He carries music with him not only in his hand, on his phone, and in his head as an encyclopedia of lyrics, but also deep inside. “I listen to a song and I can feel it in my heart. I feel that jam in me,” he says. Daniel doesn’t only live out his love of music warming up in the Activity Center, or trying out new moves at the front of his dance fitness classes. “I dance at home by myself. I dance while I’m sleeping.”
When I ask him what he wants people to know about him, Daniel hits the highlights (and those who know him nod along at every point), “I’m really humble. I’m a really funny guy. I’m smart and I make people laugh,” he says. “I can dance.” He really can.