The sounds of tap shoes hitting the floor filled the main room at the Lymes’ Senior Center in Old Lyme on a recent January morning.

Dance instructor Bethany Haslam led a class of about 15 seniors through a tap dance routine to Frank Sinatra’s “My Kind of Girl” as sunlight streamed in from the windows.

“Good!” Haslam shouted in encouragement to the seniors who performed shuffle steps while pivoting in a circle as part of the routine.

The seniors laughed with each other and performed routines together throughout the class, held weekly at the center, and danced to upbeat songs during the beginners’ tap class.

Bette Armstrong of Old Saybrook, a former kindergarten teacher who took tap dancing as a young girl, said that when she wakes up in the morning she can’t wait to go to tap class.

Armstrong, who turns 65 in February, called Haslam an “awesome teacher” who breaks everything down for her students. Armstrong said her classmates motivate her and others to come each week.

“There are women here that are in their 70s and 80s, and they’re my inspiration,” she said. “They really are. They move, they do, they learn from other people. The relationships are great.”

Stephanie Lyon-Gould, the director of the Lymes’ Senior Center, said the tap dancing class brings benefits, most notably anti-aging effects on the brain.

“Because they are constantly needing to learn new steps and new routines, it’s a way to keep the brain healthy and young,” she said.

The class also provides participants the self-esteem boost that comes from learning new things, social benefits as participants enjoy talking to each other and learning from each other, and physical fitness benefits. She pointed out that by keeping seniors physically fit they may get more of a chance to “age in place,” since they may be less likely to have falls that could prompt them to move out of their homes.

Tap dancing at the senior center began in the spring of 2015 when about five people were interested in tapping. It has now grown to both weekly beginner’s and advanced classes, with about 15 and seven people respectively, said Haslam, who is the director of The Dance Center of Old Lyme.

“The goal was just to get everybody dancing,” Haslam said. “Tap is really good for coordination and remembering patterns. It’s physical exercise, but it’s a lot of mental exercise too.”

She said she constantly tells the seniors that she wants them to perform in recitals with her students from the studio and they all joke about it, but the class is for fun.

“There’s no pressure,” she said. “We have beginners in here. We have people who danced for years and everywhere in between. We got really lucky. We just have a wonderful group, and every time people come in they are welcomed.”

Eve Todd, of Old Lyme, who was about to put on her tap shoes for the second time, said she wanted to tap dance since she was a little kid.

She said she had felt that even if she couldn’t dance it would be worth it to have the shoes even just to put them on and make “happy sounds” on the tile floor of her bathroom while holding onto the sink.

“I mean isn’t that a happy sound?” she said as sounds of seniors’ tapping during the advanced class filled the room. “Listen to that.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” she later added. “It’s a lot of rhythm, good music, fun people, very accepting. You can just come and be yourself and move to music and have a good time.”

k.drelich@theday.com