Ballet Beautiful goes mainstream

Mary Helen Bowers Owner of Ballet Beautiful

The New York Times
May 11, 2011
By KAYLEEN SCHAEFER

Lining Up to the Barre

EVEN if you never intend to dance onstage at Lincoln Center, like Natalie Portman’s character in “Black Swan,” you probably want to look as if you do (minus, of course, her stab wound).

Women have long coveted sinewy arms, high and tight derrières, lean legs and a regal posture. Now, in search of this shape, many of them are ditching yoga and Pilates and lining up at the ballet barre. There are at least 10 ballet-based workout studios in New York City and countless others across the country, like Pure Barre or the Bar Method. Even chain gyms like Equinox have added barre-centered classes to their lineup. There’s no sign of the curtain falling anytime soon. Even FlyWheel, the popular spinning classes, added FlyBarre in December.

“Barre methods were popular before ‘Black Swan,’ ” said Mahri Relin, the head instructor at FlyBarre. “But then they were touted as something that made you look like a dancer, and that’s made them even more popular.”

At the front of the corps is Mary Helen Bowers, who trained Ms. Portman for the movie. A former professional ballerina turned fitness instructor, Ms. Bowers taught private clients her Ballet Beautiful workout method for two years before Ms. Portman found her. Then, for about a year and half, she accompanied the actress to various film sets as she prepared for “Black Swan.” (Of being in Northern Ireland while Ms. Portman was filming “Your Highness,” Ms. Bowers said, “Danny McBride has beautiful feet.”)

This month, she is opening her own studio in SoHo to take the Ballet Beautiful method to the masses — and supermodels, apparently. Last week, Helena Christensen sauntered into the whitewashed space for a private lesson. “What I’m doing is ballet-specific in terms of the body type,” Ms. Bowers said. “The program is made to give everyone access to that ballerina body.” For example, to replicate a dancer’s leg, she has clients strengthen their inner thighs, calves, and tops and insides of knees, but skip quads. “You can’t target your quad and expect it to be long and lean,” she said.

During most group barre classes, which cost $30 to $40 each, women focus on four body parts — arms, abdomen, gluteal muscles and thighs — with highly targeted, small movements designed to tone muscles without adding mass. “Go down an inch, up an inch” is an often heard command.

The basic technique isn’t new. It was devised by the German dancer Lotte Berk, who opened her Upper East Side studio in the 1970s (it closed in 2005), and many of the current barre methods are inspired by her. Some, like Core Fusion and the Bar Method, are taught by her former instructors.

Unlike your average ballet class, these aren’t quiet sessions filled with steely competitors. The atmosphere feels more like girlfriends gathering for long-overdue drinks. Most of the instructors do have professional dance backgrounds and use words like “passé” or “relevé,” but they also tend to be unintimidating and relatable — more sorority sister than prima ballerina. On a recent morning, Kate Albarelli, a former ballerina, led the 15 or so women in her Figure 4 class at Pure Yoga on the Upper West Side through a series of leg lifts as they held onto the barre. “Everything is engaged,” Ms. Albarelli said, before joking: “Except me. Yet.”

Jenn Falik, 32, a television style and beauty expert, who regularly goes to Core Fusion, a barre class in the Exhale Spa in Gramercy Park that’s known for being as calming as it is challenging, said that it’s sometimes like a social outing for her. “If I go at a popular time,” she said, “I know everyone.” (She noted, “I also love that you don’t get too sweaty so you don’t have to re-blow out your hair after a hard class. And I think secretly whether they admit it or not many devotees would agree.”)

Which doesn’t mean barre classes aren’t as hard. Most of the moves, like squats in a grand plié position with raised heels, are so intense that they will make your muscles shake and burn within minutes. “Some of these exercises are lethal,” said Fred DeVito, a founder of Core Fusion.

Even professional ballet dancers find them difficult. “It was so hard for me,” Ms. Albarelli said of her class at Physique 57, a barre studio known for its fast-paced choreography. “I was like, ‘What the heck did I just do?’ ”

Alicia Weihl, a former professional ballerina who is now a director of training at Physique 57, was also surprised by how hard she found her first class. “I thought I was so strong because I could dance on my toes for 8 or 10 hours, no problem,” she said. “I was shaking during the thigh workout. I could barely walk out of there.”

Mr. DeVito and his co-founder, Elisabeth Halfpapp, were the first instructors to break away from Lotte Berk — in 2002 after 22 years as instructors there — to start their own studio. “We feel like the mother and father of these classes,” he said. “I can go through the list, and everyone has lineage to the days back at 67th and Madison in that town house with Liz and me running the program.”

Today, the two aren’t bothered by all the imitators — or seeing socks branded with the names of other studios in their own studio (socks are worn to prevent slipping and to imitate a ballet slipper). “I look at it like yoga,” Mr. DeVito said. “The more styles of yoga, the bigger the program becomes, and the word just spreads a little more.”

Brooke Scher, a publicist at Alison Brod, appreciates the variety. She goes to both Physique 57 and Core Fusion. “I like to mix it up,” she said. “Even though they’re very similar, it’s a nice change of pace to do both.” She said the barre workouts, which she does four times a week, had radically revised her body. “My arms are a thousand times toner,” she said. “My core strength went from nothing to something,” she added.

“Every single inch of me has changed.” She paused. “Except I’m still not particularly graceful.”

Personal Comment: I'm glad to see her going mainstream for the non-dancers among us on the East Coast.