The ladies’ glisten with sweat as they file out of Zumba class, some clutching water bottles. They’re worn because they’ve just finished their workout—er, finished dancing.

Zumba, a turned-up-a-notch aerobics class meets three times a week on the bottom floor of the Unique Fitness gym, so it’s got to be a workout.

But close your eyes at most any point during the one-hour session, and you’ll think you could be at a night club.

“It’s dancing but it’s still a good workout,” says Sonja Cummings of Newberry.

“It’s not a workout,” says the Zumba flyer at Unique Fitness. “It’s a party! Come dance with me!”

Zumba classes began in the mid-’90s in Colombia, South America, but Newberry began Zumba classes a couple years ago at the hospital.

Fairly new or not, locals like the import.

The class weaves dance music with “easy-to-follow moves” to get people loving their workout, says the Zumba Web site.

And though the program boasts “Latin flavor and international zest,” they are old school too.

“Funky Cold Medina” booms from two speakers just above a mirror stretching across the wall in one Thursday’s Zumba class.

“Roll! Roll!” says instructor Maria Floyd who calls the shots up front facing the mirror.

The five women in the class jerk their hips back in time at Floyd’s leading.

“Break it down! Get it up," Floyd calls. “Two times!”

Some women take their time, working the hip rolls, jump lunges and salsa steps with caution and precision.

Others are straight up dancing, snapping their fingers while stepping and singing the words.

Cummings is one of the finger-snapping dancers at the first-ever Thursday night Zumba class at Unique Fitness.

It’s Cummings’ fourth Zumba class and one of the smallest she’s been in.

Other nights, the group is so big, people dance on the carpet because the hard floor space is taken, she says.

Class members on Monday and Wednesday requested yet another night of Zumba, so Thursday it was, Floyd decided.

The Thursday class was a good night for beginners, said newcomer Evelyn Dyke, who preferred dancing on the back row. Low attendance made it easier to learn the moves, she says.

Dyke is a yoga devotee who also likes stationary bike classes. But even in those YMCA exercise classes, Zumba was talked up until Dyke had to try it herself.

“It was what I need,” she says after the workout. “It definitely works all parts of your body.”

Weeknights on Dyke’s calendar are already marked for the Y, but she says she’ll add Zumba to Thursdays.

In the meantime, she’s bringing some of the moves home—or to the store.

Sure, some of the hipsy hula-type dances aren’t apt for spare time in public, but the more discreet moves are perfect while waiting.

“Especially the ab thing,” she says.

The move where you hold in and tighten your stomach could be done “in the Wal-Mart line,” she says.

The results, too, are portable.

“All right,” calls Floyd as speakers pump out a hybrid mod-oldie version of “The Twist.” “Some more ab work. Gonna look good in those bikinis,” she says.

“I’ll take it,” says one woman. “I need it.”

After “The Twist,” during a mini break, one women lifts the back hem of her shirt partly over the air stream blowing from one of seven fans in the room as others again tip back their water bottles. Some wipe their faces with towels.

When the next song begins to boom out the speakers, after nearly 45 minutes of dancing, the groups’ steps are slightly slower than before.

“All right, two more (songs) and we’re done,” says Floyd amid heavy sighs.

“Push it,” she calls. “Push it hard.”

The final song is slower than the others and the exercise ends with Floyd calling for deep breaths.

“Give me another one,” she says.

The ladies then hear another “good job” from Floyd and the class is over.

They clap, perhaps for themselves for finishing well or for their leader, Floyd.

Floyd first fell for Zumba in January 2009 at Newberry County Memorial Hospital. But when the instructor moved to Kansas, Zumba classmates pushed Floyd to get certification to teach.

She trained in an 8-hour class in Georgia, having never taught exercise before.

But she knew she could dance all along.

Floyd grew up waltzing and two-stepping in the living room with her mom and dad, she says.

She’s moved effortlessly into more modern Zumba beats, loving the hip-hop and Latin-inspired steps.

“This is what I was meant to do. I mean, I work in a rock quarry 50 hours a week, but this is what I love to do,” she says. “This is my niche. I wish I would have found this 30 years ago.”

But finding Zumba only two years ago hasn’t been that bad for Floyd and others.

“Once you break that sweat, you know it’s working,” says first-timer Genice Thompson, climbing the steps towards the exit. “And we broke a sweat down here.”