Former Dancer
- Apr 27, 2024
- 4 min read
Tallahassee Democrat Dec 12 2011
Former dancer Ron Fletcher dies; helped popularize Pilates exercises
By Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times
Ron Fletcher, a former dancer and choreographer who helped popularize the Pilates exercise system when he opened the first West Coast studio in 1972, died Tuesday at his home in Stonewall, Texas. He was 90.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said Kyria Sabin, director of Fletcher Pilates, which trains instruc- tors in the exercise methods Fletcher developed based on the teachings of Joseph and Clara Pilates.
Forty years ago, few people outside of New York, where the Pilates method was first taught, had heard of the unusual fitness regimen, which involved strange-looking machines and movements similar to yoga and calisthenics. Today it is practiced by millions of people around the world, a popularity due in part to the celebrity buzz that surrounded Fletcher's Beverly Hills studio.
Located above an exclusive salon at Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, it attracted a who's who of Hollywood in the 1970s, including Candice Bergen, Ali MacGraw, Dyan Cannon, Katharine Ross, Barbra Streisand, Raquel Welch and Cher.
Even Nancy Reagan, then California's first lady, dropped in for raucous gabfests with Fletcher, whom she had known since her acting days in the 1940s.
"I saw every actor and actress you ever heard of in there... all the time," MacGraw recalled in an interview last week. "It was fun. You'd crawl in and say, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to really work for this hour' ... but you laughed all the way through it because Ron ... was hysterical."
In the Pilates world, he was seen as a pioneer who took the fitness program in new, sometimes controversial directions, expanding it to include standing exercises, floor work derived from his early studies with dance icon Martha Graham and upper body work done with the aid of a rolled towel.
"We revere him as an elder teacher," said Kevin Bowen, a cofounder of the nonprofit Pilates Method Alliance, which sets international training standards.
The "elders" were a small core of instructors who were trained by the Pilateses, German immigrants who established a studio in New York in the 1920s that attracted many dancers with injuries. One of them was Fletcher, who was a Graham student in the late 1940s when he sought the Pilateses' help to treat a sore knee.
When he walked into their studio and saw the collection of odd contraptions Joseph had invented for Pilates work, he nearly turned around and left. "It looked like a medieval torture chamber," he told the Allentown Morning Call in 2003. "But with in an hour I knew I was in the right place." He followed the exercises, which emphasized using the mind to stretch, strengthen and control the body, particularly the abdominal core. Fletcher healed his knee without surgery.
Born of Irish and Sauk Indian descent on May 29, 1921, in Dogtown, Mo., Fletcher grew up there in humble circumstances. After World War II, when he was working in the advertising department of Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, he went to a performance of Graham's company and decided he wanted to join it.
He parted with Graham when he he joined the cast of the 1946 Broadway musical "The Lute Song," starring Mary Martin, a move that launched his career as a dancer and choreographer. He staged shows for the Ice Capades for 13 years, a run that ended because of a drinking problem.
He gave up his studio about 20 years ago and moved to Texas but continued to travel the world giving workshops. He taught his last class in May at a 90th birthday celebration in Tucson, Ariz.
His longtime partner, John Battles, died last year. He is survived by a half sister, Fran Herrera, of Los Angeles.
Fletcher Pilates 中心负责人 Kyria Sabin 表示，死因是充血性心力衰竭。该中心负责培训教练使用Fletcher 在Joseph Pilates 和 Clara Pilates 教義的基礎上開發的锻炼方法。
四十年前，在普拉提方法首次傳授的紐約以外，很少有人聽說過這種不尋常的健身養生方式，其中包括看起來奇怪的機器和類似於瑜伽和健身操的動作。如今，世界各地有數百萬人練習這種練習，這種練習之所以受歡迎，部分原因是弗萊徹比佛利山工作室周圍的名人熱議。
在普拉提界，他被視為一位先驅，將健身計劃帶入了新的、有時充滿爭議的方向，將其擴展到包括站立練習、從他早期與舞蹈偶像Martha Graham的研究中衍生出來的地板練習，以及借助捲起的毛巾進行的上半身練習。
Last Class with
Ron Fletcher
Ron Fletcher Autobiography
Ron Fletcher (May 29, 1921 – December 6, 2011) was an American Pilates Master Teacher,[1] an author [2] and a Martha Graham dancer.[3] He was also a Broadway stage, network television, cabaret and International Ice Capades choreographer.[3] He is identified as a “Pilates Elder”—a “first-generation teacher” who studied directly under Joseph and Clara Pilates.[1]
Originally referred to Joseph Pilates by fellow dancer for treatment of a chronic knee injury,[4] Fletcher was schooled in the principles of Body Contrology (the name Pilates gave to his fitness and conditioning method) [5] by Joseph and Clara Pilates, with whom he studied in their New York City studio at 939 8th Avenue,[6] on and off from 1948 until one year after Joseph Pilates’ death in 1967.[3]
Comments