Kelly Ripa.Photo: Kelly Ripa/Instagram
Kelly Ripaknows how to have fun while helping a friend raise money for an important cause.
In anInstagram video, Ripa, 50, showed off a few high-energy dance moves — ending in an impressive split — to help her friend and trainer Issac “Boots” Calpitoraise money for nurses and other frontline workerswho have been fighting the coronavirus for over a year.
“A lightly edited choreo moment,“Kelly wrote on Instagramwith the one-minute video. “Because @isaacboots is a do gooder let’s help him say thank you to the hero nurses and front line hospital workers in association with NYU Langone. #danceanddonatechallenge.”
Calpito’sDance + Donate Challengebenefitting NYU Langone Health in Manhattan has Ripa and others (includingLisa RinnaandJenna Dewan) making dance videos modeled after moves the trainer filmed and set to Steph Amoroso’s song “Electric Light.”
“Why not harness this moment going into summer when things are opening up with a festive, celebratory way to raise money,” Calpito, 40, tells PEOPLE.
Calpito, former Broadway-dancer-turned-celebrity trainer, posted a dance demo video on hisYouTube, encouraging viewers to give the moves a try or to make up their own version on Instagram using the hashtag #danceanddonatechallenge and tagging@IsaacBootsand@NYULangone.
The cause is close to his heart.
“Being a New Yorker and going through this pandemic and seeing the city, how it was particularly at the height of the pandemic,” he says, “I couldn’t help but feel and be aware of what the nurses and frontline workers have had to deal with.”
“These people were on the front lines, putting them themselves out there every day,” he says, “you know, and exhausted.”
Calpito in front of NYC billboard announcing fundraiser.Natassja Ebert
This fundraiser adds to Calpito’s largesse since the start of the pandemic. Since March 2020 he’s been holding a free — and tough — daily workout class streaming over Instagram Live (@Isaacboots) called Torch’d; donations from participants haveraised almost $1.2 million for No Kid Hungry, which provides free meals to children.
This summer, Calpito will once again be giving in-person classes — with proceeds befitting theChildren’s Museum of East End— in Bridgehampton, New York. His Torch’d Summer Residency in the Hamptons runs June 19 - Sept 5, 2021. Info and tickets atisaacboots.com
“It’s exciting,” he says, “because things are opening up.”
source: people.com
