Fen Tung

Fen Tung is a dance-fitness educator and co-founder of BollyX, a choreographed cardio program that brings Bollywood and South Asian dance vocabularies into a cue-based, repeatable group-fitness format. Described as Taiwanese-American, Tung grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, where she participated in karate, swimming, gymnastics, running, and mountain biking. She studied biology at MIT while considering medical school, but a part-time gym job during her studies redirected her toward preventive health through movement and group instruction.

Tung began her fitness career in 2003 as a NASM-certified personal trainer and soon added group-fitness teaching. In a documented account, she recalls that her first cardio-kickboxing class in January 2005 lost all three students; rather than abandon the format, she sought feedback, rehearsed her instruction, and rebuilt her approach. This experience became foundational to her later teaching philosophy: preparation, clear cueing, and confidence in the instructor matter more than mystique. She became an International Sports Conditioning Association master trainer in 2010, leading certifications in kickboxing and mat Pilates, and expanded her training across STOTT Pilates, Totalbarre, Zumba, Les Mills formats, kettlebell, boxing, and interval conditioning.

In 2009, Tung began taking Bollywood dance lessons. In 2013, she joined Shahil Patel and Minal Mehta in developing BollyX, serving as co-founder, product and fitness director, and instructor trainer. Patel and Mehta brought collegiate Bollywood-dance and business experience; Tung brought anatomy, personal training, group-exercise design, and program expertise. Her role centered on making choreography physically effective and safe while maintaining challenge for experienced dancers—translating South Asian movement vocabulary into a fitness context without stopping for step-by-step instruction.

The BollyX format uses repeated movement phrases, nonverbal and verbal pre-cueing, and alternating intensity levels to create a continuous dance-fitness experience. The program draws from Bollywood film music, Bhangra, and regional folk vocabularies. Tung and her collaborators also developed low-impact and children's variants, embedding accessibility into the core method rather than treating adaptation as an afterthought. By 2016, the program had trained more than 1,500 instructors across 400 class locations. Tung has continued teaching Cardio 1 classes in Cambridge in person and online, and her published writing frames body confidence as learned through imperfect beginnings, feedback, rehearsal, and the experience of leading a room—the same principles that shaped her early fitness teaching.