Kelly Ripa Shows Off Her Dance Moves to Help Raise Money For Frontline Nurses

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Kelly Ripa/Instagram Kelly Ripa

Kelly Ripa knows how to have fun while helping a friend raise money for an important cause.

In an Instagram video, Ripa, 50, showed off a few high-energy dance moves — ending in an impressive split — to help her friend and trainer Issac "Boots" Calpito raise money for nurses and other frontline workers who have been fighting the coronavirus for over a year.

"A lightly edited choreo moment," Kelly wrote on Instagram with 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's Dance + Donate Challenge benefitting NYU Langone Health in Manhattan has Ripa and others (including Lisa Rinna and Jenna 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 his YouTube, encouraging viewers to give the moves a try or to make up their own version on Instagram using the hashtag #danceanddonatechallenge and tagging @IsaacBoots and @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."

Natassja Ebert Calpito in front of NYC billboard announcing fundraiser

Money raised goes to the frontline workers' wellness programs at NYU Langone, which focuses on decreasing stress and burnout triggered by caring for so many seriously ill patients with coronavirus.

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 have raised 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 the Children'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 at isaacboots.com

"It's exciting," he says, "because things are opening up."