New Zealand Listener

SHALL WE DANCE?

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Thank you for the feature on fitness and optimising life (“Young at heart”, February 2). One omission: there was no mention of the fitness, fun, sociabilit­y and aesthetic pleasures found in the many types of dancing huge numbers of New Zealanders – mostly women – are involved in.

From ballroom and Zumba to belly and folk, dancing brings intense rewards. Perhaps it is invisible to writers about fitness because it is done indoors and is mostly not competitiv­e.

Rae Storey (Remuera, Auckland)

Correspond­ent Ray Hoare

(February 9) asks why fitness articles focus on jogging and gyms and “other boring activities”? I could ask the same thing.

I am an 80-year-old tramper and keen amateur botanist. I have just enjoyed six days in Central Otago, each day carrying a 6kg pack. I relished the company of the group of people I was with and the wonderful block mountains with their fascinatin­g alpine plants, under Central’s famed “big sky”.

I took with me my spanking new hip (inserted last October), rebored prostate (done in December) and an eye minus a cataract, which was removed last

May. Clambering up steep, often rocky slopes was utterly invigorati­ng. What a wonderful way to get fit and

stay that way.

Chris Horne (Northland, Wellington)

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