Blessed Body & Fitness hosts 4th annual Dance for a Cure Health Fair
BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LAFAYETTE — Dance and donate, the Blessed Body & Fitness 4th Annual “Taking it Back to Da Streetz” All Cancer Dancing for a Cure Health Fair is raising money and awareness for those in the community with cancer on Nov. 2 at 3 p.m. CST outside of Blessed Body & Fitness Gym with a $10 registration fee.
“Everybody gets together to spread awareness, and the fun part is the dancing — along with the health part of exercise,” said founder and organizer of Dance for a Cure, Pamelar Whitlow Holloway. “We can do our part with our choices of food and exercise. So that's how I started trying to promote this, to let them know, as the gym owner, it's important what we're eating, what we put inside our bodies and how we exercise. They love the fact that they can dance in the streets. So that's been positive — to be able to give back and to be able to dance, to spread awareness.“
Holloway said she was inspired to start the Dance for a Cure event after her mother-in-law passed away from her battle with cancer.
“We're trying to spread awareness for all types of cancer,” she said. “My husband's mom passed away with bone cancer, and that kind of triggered us to start trying to spread awareness after we lost her. I own the gym, so I told my husband. I said, ‘Let's do something to spread awareness and to give back.’”
At the Dance for a Cure, Holloway said, along with dancing, participants can enjoy different vendors and organizations sharing medical information.
“I came up with that idea four years ago,” she said. “So the rest is kind of history. We block downtown LaFayette off on the side where the gym is. And we just dance. We have different vendors that come out with different information about different types of cancer. We have the Chambers County Wellness Center — they will be out there. The United Health and Wellness from the Opelika-Auburn area — they'll be there. We will have different kinds of health vendors that come out to help us spread awareness for different health issues.”
With the proceeds from the $10 registration fee, Holloway said she purchases gas cards to help those battling cancer with transportation to treatments.
“We give gas cards to cancer patients who are going through treatment or have just finished,” she said. “We try to help them — or whoever drives them back and forth — to take a little of the load off. I know we can't do a lot, we have a lot of people that we try to contribute to, but we at least try to do a $100 gas card. And it's just been a great event, and people are realizing what we're doing, the cause of it and they're jumping on board slowly but surely.”
Holloway said the dance is an all-cancer event with a rainbow theme to represent all types of cancer and a balloon release to honor all those who have fought cancer, are fighting cancer or have tragically lost their life to cancer.
“Our event is an all-cancer awareness health fair,” she said. “We do all cancers, we don't just target breast cancer, and we decided to do that because of my mother-in-law — we do all the rainbow colors. So most of my apparel is rainbow. Each cancer represents a different color. So we try to wear something to cover all the colors.”
As the Dance for a Cure has continued to grow, Holloway said raising awareness and helping others has helped her and her husband navigate their loss and grief from losing a loved one to cancer.
“She was a loving person,” she said. “She was a giving person. She worked in the school system. She was a substitute teacher for years, and everybody knew her in Chambers County, and everybody loved her so much. We’re doing this in her name. People tell me, ‘Sylvia would definitely want y'all to do this. This is what she would have done.’ So, just to be able to navigate through it — it helped.”
For more information, visit Blessed Body & Fitness Gym on Facebook.
