DISCIPLES OF JOSEPH AND CLARA PILATES

 Romana Kryzanowska was a ballet dancer who came to Joe to rehabilitate an ankle injury in the early 1940s. She felt improvement in her ankle in just 3 sessions and continued to study with Joe and Clara until she moved to Peru. Fifteen years later, she moved back to New York City where Joe helped to rehabilitate a knee injury she suffered when she fell into an open manhole with her baby. She began to teach the Pilates method and later became the studio's director when Clara retired. She remained the director until the studio eventually closed in 1989 when she opened her own studio in Drago's Gym. She continues to teach there in addition to her workshops and seminars around the world. Romana is credited with keeping the classical legacy of the Pilates method alive.
Top

Kathy Grant worked as a chorus girl at New York's famous Zanzibar Club and had a long and prestigious career as a dancer and choreographer, working throughout the world in theatre, television and film. She came to Joe Pilates to rehabilitate a knee injury and became a life long convert as well. She became the director of the Pilates studio in the famous Henri Bendel department store from 1972 until it closed in 1988. She is one of the only two teachers to be officially certified by Joseph Pilates through the New York State Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. She continues to teach Pilates and train instructors as an adjunct professor on the faculty of the Department of Dance at the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Dance department.
Top

Carola Trier was a professional dancer and an acrobatic contortionist who performed an act onroller skates. A severe accident while she was performing brought her to Joe and Clara Pilates who helped rehabilitate a back injury that would have debilitated her for life. She studied and taught with Joe and Clara and, in 1958, they helped her open her own studio, where a number of the other first generation teachers taught. Carola studied anatomy and worked in conjunction with Dr. Jordan at Lennox Hill Hospital rehabilitating patients. She also identified and developed many Pilates-based exercises to correct common problems found in dancers. Carola taught and trained other Pilate's teachers into the mid 1980s and passed away in October of 2000, at the age of 87.
Top

Eve Gentry was a master of modern dance. She was a lead dancer with the Hanya Holm Dance Company beforeeventually starting her own dance company, the Eve Gentry Dancers. She came to Joe and Clara Pilates with knee and back pain and was amazed at how afterworking with Joe her pain was gone. She taught with Joe and Clara at their studio from between 1938 to 1968 and taught the Pilates Method in the early 1960s in the Theatre Department at New York University. She eventually moved to New Mexico to open her own Pilates Method Studio in Santa Fe. She developed and taught her own body conditioning method based on her work with Joseph Pilates, Hanya Holm and other movement innovators, working with many injured people. She help to establish the Institute for the Pilates Method, was a charter faculty member of the High School of Performing Arts, was co-founder of the Dance Notation Bureau and was given the 'Pioneer of Modern Dance' award by Bennington College in 1979. She continued teaching clients and teachers in Santa Fe and around the world until shortly before her death in 1994 at the ageof 84.
Top

Ron Fletcher was a Martha Graham dancer in New York City in 1946 when a chronic knee injury brought him to Joseph and Clara Pilates. His dancing career was long and illustrious but notwithout its pressures. After battling alcoholism through Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and daily Pilates sessions with Clara, Fletcher was inspired to teach Pilates. With Clara's blessing he opened the Ron Fletcher Studio for Body Contrology in Beverly Hills, counting such famous celebrities as Barbra Streisand and Candace Bergen among his clientele. Using the methods he learned from Joe and Clara Pilates along with the work he did with Martha Graham and Yeichi Nimura, Fletcher developed new innovations such as The Standing Towel Work and Percussive Breathing. He now lives in Texas and runs two teacher training schools in Arizona and Colorado.
Top

Lolita San Miguel is one of only two teachers to receive a certification from Joseph Pilates himself. She suffered a knee injury from dance in her 20s that led her to Carola Trier. After completing a training certification with Trier she studied with Joe in 1966 and later moved to Puerto Rico to found the Ballet Concierto of Puerto Rico where she infused everything with Pilates. Recently she started the Pilates y Mas Studio in Puerto Rico.
Top

Mary Bowen was a comedian and actress when she came to study with Joseph and Clara Pilates. She suffered from a bad back and began to feel relief after two sessions. She studied with Grant and Kryzanowska as well as with Bruce King. She opened her own studio, Your Own Gym, in North Hampton, Massachusetts in 1975. A Jungian analyst, Bowen developed her Pilates Plus Psyche system to fuse movement with the unconscious.
Top

Bruce King trained with Joseph Pilates for many years and was a dancer with the Merce CunninghamCompany, the Alwyn Nikolais Company, and his own Bruce King Dance Company. Heopened his own Pilates Studio in New York City in the mid 1970s.
Top

Robert Fitzgerald was a dancer who worked with Joe and Clara Pilates as well as Carola Trier. He opened his studio in the mid 1960s and developed a large following within the dance community.
Top

Mary Pilates LeRiche is the niece of Joseph and Clara Pilates and worked in her Uncle's studio since her20's. Mary has been teaching Pilates in South Florida since the 1960s as her uncle taught it to her and is a shining example in her 80's of how the PilatesMethod's of keeps us young.
Top

Dianne Miller
Top