Mary Helen Bowers Debuts a Fashionable Tome – test.json-content-importer.com

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Within moments of speaking to Mary Helen Bowers, it becomes clear that her love of dance was immediate and lifelong. Like most professionals, The artist started young, and began dancing at the New York City Ballet at age 16. After a decade at the company, she left to begin a new life at Columbia University, and began slowly developing the rigorous ballet-based fitness routine Ballet Beautiful. Bowers famously trained Natalie Portman for Black Swan, and if you look around her Greene Street studio in NYC, you’re apt to spot anyone from Imaan Hammam to Alexa Chung and Miranda Kerr perfecting their balance, strength and flexibility through Bowers’ elegant and at times brutal workouts. This week, the artist and teacher releases Ballet for Life (Rizzoli), a gorgeous monograph shot by Inez & Vinoodh displaying each component of Ballet Beautiful, from workout techniques to fashion, beauty and wellness. CR connected with the dancer to talk making ballet more accessible, workouts on the go, and why diet trends just aren’t worth the hype.

Can you talk about how you began Ballet Beautiful and what it was like moving from dancing professionally into creating all these programs for other women?

It was very organic. When I left the New York City Ballet, I went to Columbia University as a full time student. It was something that I felt I was really missing. I needed to take some space from dance. My body was burnt out. I didn’t want to work out. I didn’t want to go to a ballet studio. I probably took almost a year. I wasn’t moving the same way every day, I was eating more food, and I was just relaxed in a way that I hadn’t been since I was a young kid. I think that break was so essential. I desperately needed to find a life for myself outside of the ballet studio. As time passed, I realized I missed dance in a certain sense and my body, which had been trained so rigorously for so many years, was hurting from not moving. There were a series of exercises that I had created for myself when I was dancing at New York City Ballet and had an injury early on. I ended going back to those and working out on a towel in my bedroom for like 45 minutes a day, a couple days a week. My body started to change. My metabolism sped up. I was also relaxing about food and eating carbs—things that I thought were totally off limits—that contributed, too. It was me coming back to exercising, but in this really fresh new, much healthier way. I wanted to make ballet a part of my life again, but in my own way. That’s really how Ballet Beautiful got started. From there, I started sharing it with some friends. I started working out with Natalie [Portman] pretty early in that process. She was a very early client of mine, and that ended up being a great thing because I had a lot of time on my hands that I could devote to her training and it frankly informed a lot of what Ballet Beautiful became. We were traveling all over the world and I was training her living in a small hotel room or an apartment in various cities and when Natalie was on set, I was training online with clients in New York or LA. As the workout was solidifying, I was thinking, ‘How do we share this?’ It really just all came together in this very lovely way.

Tell us about your new book. What did you think was essential to convey?

It was very important to explain the connection between ballet and the Ballet Beautiful workout—to explain what a ballet dancer’s body is, what muscles are you using in your everyday training as a dancer, and how do we take that and then translate that into fitness, into a workout that anyone can do. That was the main goal with the project—to really demystify the connection between ballet and exercise. Certainly for any professional dancer or aspiring dancer, there is a lot of great information in the book, but one of my goals has always been to open up the world of Ballet Beautiful to the non-dancer and to make it a bit of a more inclusive place, a place where people can come and enjoy and participate and not feel that dance is something that can only be enjoyed from the sidelines.

What do you think are the biggest myths that new or non-dancers have about the art?

The ballet world has always been very precious. It’s this incredibly beautiful, rarefied art form, and it really has been something that you had to experience in the audience. You had to be really on the other side of the curtain to participate and understand. For me, it’s really important to let people know that you don’t have to be a professional dancer to train like one. Ballet can be enjoyed by anyone really at any age. To take a less serious approach towards the training.

Can you talk a little bit about the style aspect? Who are some of the women who you think convey this connection between ballet and that elegance and everyday dress?

I like pieces that are really classic but that also have great movement. Things that are really comfortable, like a really great leotard that you can wear in the studio with a pair of tights and a skirt, or that you can take it onto the streets with a pair of high waisted jeans. I have leotards that I’ve worn to galas with a Carolina Herrera ball gown and heels and a leotard on top. It can be fun to play with fashion from a ballet perspective, and I think we see it on the runway a lot—especially in couture where you see a lot of tulle and there is a real fantasy element.

And what about the beauty and the wellness aspect?

Dancers become experts at perfecting the low bun, the high bun, the braided twist—you have to have a lot of different looks in your repertoire. A bun is easy, quick if your hair is a little messy. Add a bit of hairspray or water and it’s going to look really chic for an event. I love that aspect of ballet, where you can really dress the hair and makeup up or down. My skin tends to be dry so I’m always looking for products that are really moisturizing. I like a very hydrating toner and I love serum and I always have sunscreen on during the day. It’s all about taking the best care possible that you can of your body, of your skin, of your hair, from the workout to how you apply your moisturizer every night. When you take good care of yourself, it’s much easier to maintain than correct. And it’s the same thing with your workout—we really encourage people to do three hours of ballet beautiful a week. Some people are able to do more…the Victoria Secret Angels leading up to the show—they’re doing a bit more. I don’t believe in dieting and going to all these extremes. The most important thing is figuring out what your system is so you’re really feeling your best on an every day basis.

What’s your food/dieting philosophy? Are there any current trends that you think are positive or that you would really veer away from?

There’s always a new juice cleanse or something. I did that in the past, and it never worked. None of it was ever the solution and that was because I didn’t understand my body. It took a lot of trial and error for me to put together a system for myself. At that time, I was either eating too little or too much or just feeling like very obsessive about my diet and my food. And it made me very unhappy. While I went up and down more, my weight was consistently much heavier when I was younger because I just wasn’t taking as good as care of myself as I should have been on an everyday basis. My diet isn’t very exciting, but it’s more sensible. I like to eat a lot of produce. I have a salad every day. I try to fit in my fruits and my veggies. Lean proteins. I eat carbs, but I try to choose whole grain carbs. So maybe more like oats or whole grain pasta. I eat meat. I eat gluten. I eat dairy. I drink coffee. I do a lot of the things that a lot of the dieting trends tell you not to do. For me and my body, finding a way to enjoy the things I love but in moderation is what’s most sensible and best.

What’s next for you?

We’re launching our book with Rizzoli this week, and we’re in the process of developing a new website that is all mobile. We want Ballet Beautiful to be accessible to anyone, anywhere.

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