Pilates Mat Class for Dancers

September 4 - February 26

TUE 2-3:15

MR@Gibney 280 Broadway

Class incorporates dance, somatic practices, and strength training. These approaches are used to work with a range of bodies. We use props in-conjunction with Pilates exercises to open and release tightness that might inhibit movement. We organize our alignment through each exercise creating balance between strength, flexibility, and coordination.

Johanna S. Meyer is a Pilates teacher, choreographer and dancer. She has performed and made work since the 1990s in New York City and recently graduated with an MFA in Dance from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She taught Pilates in New York ( Swan Pilates, Greene Street Pilates, Noho Pilates and Finetune), Hunter College, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Oslo, Norway.

Johanna was originally inspired to train in Pilates, while studying dance at New York University. There she met Kathy Grant, a protégé of Joseph Pilates, and was exposed to significant changes in the dancers who were recovering from injuring and making changes in their bodies. Later, after suffering from chronic back and knee pain, she started studying Pilates, and has lived almost pain free ever since.

She completed her certification with Deborah Lessen at the Greene Street Studio (1997). Johanna has continued her studies in anatomy with Irene Dowd and assisted Rebecca Dietzel’s Anatomy class at The Alvin Ailey School at Fordham University. She has continued her interest in body mechanics and has studied Alexander technique with Sigal Bergman and with Rebecca Nettl Fiol and others at UIUC.

Johanna’s Pilates teaching incorporates her work in dance, somatic practices, and strength training. She combines these practices with classical and other styles of Pilates. She uses these various approaches as tools to work with a wide range of bodies from dancers to people recovering from injuries. She is interested in helping clients to understand their body mechanics, as well as looking for ways to deepen and challenge their physical experience. She works from micro to macro movements helping clients to experience the anatomy of joint release and subtle connections of the limbs to torso, while refining alignment and allowing the body to regroup.