IN TODAY’S CELEBRITY-DRIVEN culture, Pilates–a style of body conditioning that’s been
around since the 1930s–is enjoying new popularity. Most instructors working today are not
old enough to have studied directly with Joseph Pilates and his wife, Clara, although there
are a few, including 82-year-old Run Fletcher, a lively and still-limber man who studied with
Martha Graham in the late 1940s, and went to see Pilates in 1947 after experiencing chronic
knee pain.
BREATHING LESSONS
Fletcher created The Ron Fletcher Work(TM), a movement regimen he culled from Pilates
exercises, Graham technique, and what he calls percussive breathing. Were they alive today,
Graham and Pilates might be surprised to find their work combined, since, says Fletcher,
each complained to him about the other. (Pilates thought Graham was crazy; she dismissed
Pilates as a randy old goat, and, says Fletcher, each had a point.) But what they shared was a
belief that breath was integral to movement.
“Joe used to say, ‘Out de air, in de air,’ and Graham would inhale, contract, exhale,” Fletcher
said in a post-workshop interview last June in San Francisco. “Two bigger egos have never
existed than Joe and Martha, but they were basically saying the same thing. I’ve taken the
basic Pilates technique but added to it, modifying the neutral spine and adding port de bras
and the glory of Martha’s movement. That way dancers get a ‘goosing,’ and move to their full
potential.”
A Missouri native whose dance training was limited to free tap lessons he scrounged during
the Depression (“I put on tap shoes and could hoof like a little SOB,” he said), Fletcher left
school early and found advertising work with Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. But after a
friend took him to a Graham concert, Fletcher decided he wanted to study with her. “I would
leave Saks early and race over to the Graham studio and wait on a bench in the hall,” he said.
“I asked to see Graham every day for three weeks. She finally emerged, and said, ‘I’ve heard a
lot about you, and I came out because you rather remind me of me.'”
He told Graham he wanted to dance, and though his experience was limited, iris
determination pleased her, and his timing was good–it was after the war, and she was
adding men to the company. After a look at his turnout, she decided to take him on, provided
he would commit to six hours a day in the studio. His parents thought he was crazy, he said,
but he did it, while earning a living by doing copywriting piecework at night. “I was working
for Sears, writing about men’s underwear, plus doing some modeling,” he said. “For years,
my legs and butt were in the Sears catalogue.”
Eventually, the intensive studying with Graham and working on Broadway took their toll. “I
would bend my knee and then I couldn’t straighten it,” he said. “I’d have to shake it out, pop
it, and oh, the pain! I used to get massages, or they’d shoot my knee full of dope.” He went to
see a doctor, who recommended surgery; but before he resorted to that, a fellow dancer,
Allegra Kent, told him about Pilates.
“I almost didn’t go back after the first time because the studio looked so spooky,” he said.
“The machines looked liked guillotines. But Pilates had magic hands–he just seemed to
know what to do.” Fletcher’s knee improved, and he became enamored of the Pilates
regimen, although he didn’t begin thinking about it in career terms until the ’60s, when he
was choreographing for the Ice Capades–a lucrative career that he didn’t enjoy–and
drinking heavily. After getting drunk on an opening night at Madison Square Garden, he lost
his contract, after which he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, turned to Pilates as therapy, and
ultimately decided to teach.
Clara Pilates suggested he take over the studio, but he’d had enough of New York, so he left
for L.A. and in 1971, he opened The Ron Fletcher School of Body Contrology above a beauty
salon at the tony intersection of Rodeo and Wilshire. He called it a movement class, and said
his reputation as a dancer attracted film people, including Ali MacGraw and Katherine Ross,
which in turn drew media attention and boosted the business. He ran the studio for seven
years, then left it to two of his students and began conducting workshops around the
country.
These days, he typically teaches one or two workshops per month–a schedule he intends to
stick with until he’s at least 85–and continues to add new dimensions to Pilates work. He
also hopes to create what he’s calling “an institute for the Fletcher Program of Study.” Since
expanding his teaching practice, Fletcher has seen all increase in Pilates’s appeal, and in the
number of Pilates instructors, some of whom, he believes, don’t always have proper training
or the best intentions. “The form has become bastardized, but eventually people will realize
they won’t get rich doing this–there are too many of them–and the good teachers will
remain,” he said.
Former dancer Kathy Grant, one of Fletcher’s few contemporaries and one of only two
people to have been certified by Joseph himself, also studied Pilates after an injury; she now
teaches it at Tisch School of the Arts. She has taken a Fletcher workshop, and says his style is
true to the spirit of Pilates, if not to the letter. “Mr. Pilates always emphasized core strength
and fluidity, and Ron has captured that in his own way,” she said. Grant, who has worked
with dancers from Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Jose Limon and Paul Taylor companies,
said she and Fletcher were drawn to Pilates because it helped to rehabilitate injured dancers
before the advent of physical therapy. It has endured, she said, because “You don’t have to
stand up. You don’t overuse your muscles, which dancers tend to do. lf you have your core
strength, you can work on what Pilates called ‘the limbs of the tree.'”
Kevin Bowen, president of the Pilates Method Alliance, a nonprofit group that aims to set
international training standards, says his organization supports The Ron Fletcher Work. “We
revere him as an elder teacher. He was the first person to take the work standing, and he’s
done some innovative towel work,” Bowen said. “Because he was creative, he was able to
move the work on. although he still preaches about Body Contrology, which was what Joe
called it. Because of his background, he did something different, and that makes him
unique.”
Fletcher has his detractors, he says–people who don’t like the noisy, percussive breathing or
the Graham influence, but he feels he’s carrying on the work as Joseph and Clara would have
wanted, as both exercise and art. “Joe was an athlete … but Clara didn’t work that way–she
emphasized the aesthetics,” he said. “The work itself gets at very specific parts of the body,
enhancing the movement, bringing more power and physicality to it. Pilates and dance are a
wonderful marriage, depending on how they’re taught.”
Heather Wisher is a former associate editor of DANCE MAGAZINE.