Pilates for
dancers.
Taught by a former principal dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet — and a master classical Pilates instructor who has worked with Cirque du Soleil and Broadway performers.
Companies & organizations we’ve worked with
The dancer’s practice
Pilates was
built for
dancers.
Joseph Pilates developed his method in New York, where his studio on 8th Avenue shared a building with the New York City Ballet. Dancers were among his earliest and most dedicated students — because the method addressed what dance training demanded and what it neglected simultaneously.
Dance builds extraordinary flexibility, skill, and artistry. It does not systematically address the deep stabilizing strength, the structural symmetry, or the injury resilience that a dance career requires over time. Classical Pilates was designed to provide exactly those things — which is why professional dancers at every level have made it a cornerstone of their training for 70 years.
“Pilates was part of my practice throughout my career with the Royal Danish Ballet. It addresses what dance alone cannot — the foundation that allows extraordinary movement to be sustainable over a professional career.”
At Endurance Pilates & Yoga, our principal instructor Giordana Gallo trained at La Scala Academy in Milan, graduated from the Royal Ballet School of London, and spent seven years performing with the Royal Danish Ballet. She brings the lived experience of a professional career in dance to every session she teaches — combined with classical Pilates training that gives her both the practice and the language to address exactly what dancers’ bodies need.
What classical Pilates
does for dancers.
Injury prevention
Dance injuries are most often the result of structural imbalances — compensations built up over years of training that place asymmetric load on joints and connective tissue. Classical Pilates identifies and addresses these before they reach the threshold of injury that ends a season or a career.
Core strength that transfers
The classical Pilates powerhouse — deep abdominals, lower back, pelvic floor, hip stabilizers — is the same foundation that underlies every technical demand of dance. Pilates develops this system in a way that transfers directly to improved control, balance, and artistic range.
Spinal articulation
The spine is the instrument of expression in dance. Classical Pilates works the spine through every plane of movement, every vertebral segment, developing the articulation, control, and mobility that elevates performance from technically correct to artistically commanding.
Turnout support
Forced turnout — achieved from the wrong place in the body — is one of the most common sources of hip, knee, and ankle problems in dancers. Classical Pilates develops the deep hip external rotators and pelvic stability that allow genuine, sustainable turnout without joint compromise.
Shoulder and upper body integration
Port de bras, lifts, partnering work — all require shoulder stability and upper body integration that classical Pilates develops systematically. The Cadillac and Reformer arm work addresses the shoulders and back in ways that dance conditioning often overlooks.
Career longevity
The dancers who maintain professional careers longest are the ones who understand their bodies as systems to be maintained intelligently, not instruments to be pushed to failure. Classical Pilates is the maintenance practice that makes professional longevity possible.
Meet your instructor
Giordana Gallo —
a dancer who teaches dancers.
Giordana is a former professional ballet dancer who trained at two of the most demanding institutions in the world — La Scala Academy in Milan and the Royal Ballet School of London — before spending seven years as a performer with the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen.
She came to Pilates the way many dancers do: as an essential part of her training and injury prevention practice. She came to teaching it because she understood, from the inside, what dancers’ bodies require — and because she wanted to share that understanding with others who are living in the same demands.
Giordana teaches at Endurance Pilates & Yoga having completed the full 1,000-hour Endurance apprenticeship under Julie Erickson. She brings both the embodied knowledge of a professional dancer and the precision of a classically trained Pilates instructor.
Giordana’s photo here
