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Written by Esperanza Aparicio & Javier Pérez Pont

FIRST PART

WHAT HAPPENED TO JOE’S LEGACY?

I believe that knowledge of documented history guides, defines and completes us as educators, while at the same time we do justice to the people who participated in it and to the truth.

We must talk about a very important point and that is respect for Joe’s legacy. Even today many people, some for personal and/or professional interests and others for different reasons, do not know or recognize the documented truth.

In 2013 we wrote “Hubertus Joseph Pilates, The Byography” to fulfill Romana’s wish to pay tribute to her teacher and this was a historic milestone as it was the first biography about someone as important to us as Joe Pilates while filling a void. absolute about the real Joe Pilates. A publication that marks a before and after. A story that shows us, with documentation, who Joe Pilates was, what he did and what he wanted for the world. Before this publication we only had the oral accounts of Romana herself and a bag of inventions in the purest Harry Potter style about his biography.

Today, in this short conference, we would like to contribute to helping all users of the Romana Pilates community to better know our history and defend it with pride.

The topic of this first part of the speech, in very condensed form, is: Did Joe leave a will? The answer is yes.

On the one hand, we will obviously analyze his material legacy. And, on the other, the legacy of Contrology know-how, legally “inherited” by The Pilates Foundation for Physical Fitness created in 1964 with its legal consent.

Once we have heard the response developed with documents and historical facts, we will move on to the second part of this reading to review Romana’s life and analyze what happened to her during her life and our mission in preserving her heritage.

FACTS

Regarding the first part, the material legacy of Joe Pilates:

Joe Pilates signed a will before a notary appointing his wife Clara as executor of his material assets, which included his country house and the Studio business, along with all the contents thereof, in addition to his personal assets, of course.

After Joe’s death in October 1967, after a couple of weeks of mourning in the original studio, things continued as before. Romana continued to help Clara run the business while she worked part-time at the studio along with the rest of the instructor team, Hanna and John Winters.

Two years pass until John H. Steel, client of the Firm and Clara’s lawyer, on September 19, 1969, after meeting with Clara Pilates to talk about her retirement, and also with the aim of restarting the Pilates Foundation, sends, together to Julie Clayburgh and Arthur Steel, a letter to clients and friends of Joe who might be interested in a joint investment to buy the business from Clara.

Clara Pilates’ wise intention was to retire and ensure the continuity of the studio to guarantee Joe’s legacy and her own, and at the same time obtain a financial return. Clara had estimated the transfer at $25,000. This would include training equipment and method use, premises, books, documents and films. Clara intended to continue collaborating in the study, but not out of contractual obligation.

An interim committee consists of John Steel, Julie Clayburgh, Frank Milton, Dan Reed, Arthur Steel and James Limpton. The purpose of the Interim Committee was to raise enough money from followers to fulfill Clara’s wishes.

Three months later, on December 16, 1969, members of the Interim Committee met with potential investors and made important decisions about the future. At the meeting it is decided that, after exploring several alternatives, Romana Kryzanowska would certainly “be an ideal person to take over the studio” and that “it is her intention to continue Joe’s work in its strictest form.” Additionally, she «has experience managing the studio and feels she can rebuild the business and train more teachers.»

The Committee arranged the following for Clara: the new company will continue to pay for her apartment as long as she wants to stay in it and Clara will be hired as a consultant with no obligations to the studio and with a salary.

The new company offers Romana, after the unanimous vote of the entire Committee, the opportunity to start managing the Studio immediately if she accepts. Romana is forced to negotiate a temporary agreement due to her other professional obligations. As a result, from January to August 1970 she will work from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and from September she will work in the studio full time. She will take care of everything related to the study, except accounting, bill payment and bank deposits. In return she will receive a fixed salary plus a percentage of the business’s annual profits, if any.

Although the new company was founded on March 3, 1970, it does not begin to operate legally until the end of August, when all the partners are committed, Clara has signed all the necessary documents and Romana Kryzanowska is free to dedicate herself full-time to the studio. The name of the new company is “939 Studio Corporation”, better known as “Studio 939”.

On June 4, 1973, 939 Studio Corporation, until then owner of the original studio, changed its name, becoming known as Pilates Studio Inc. Here we see the corporation’s first attempt to use and protect the Pilates name. In the same operation, Romana Kryzanowska becomes the largest shareholder of the group with 40% of the company’s shares.

Later in this speech we will return to this point to learn how seven years later, before the death of Clara Pilates, Romana finally became the owner of the entire business and content of the Studio.

Regarding the “know-how” of the method, “Joe’s other legacy”, we must remember that in 1965 Joe signed documents before the Pilates Foundation in which he gave his irrevocable consent to the use of his name and an irrevocable commitment. He licenses you to use his exercise system and his apparatus, thus giving the name Pilates to the method, exercises and equipment.

Once again, we see John Steel attempting to revitalize the Pilates Foundation and in a letter dated March 1, 1971, he admits that there have been no meetings of The Pilates Foundation for Physical Fitness Inc. since Joe’s death and therefore , has become latent. The last Foundation meeting for which we have documentation is February 2, 1967, seven months after Joe’s death.

Now they want to reactivate the Foundation and, therefore, they request a meeting to select the members of the Board of Directors. At this meeting it is voted that Catherine di Montezemolo and Ruth Bocour, James Trosch, Arthur J. Steel, Hugo Beville Jr. and Julia Clayburgh will be the new directors of the Pilates Foundation for a period of one year, until new elections are held. held.

The immediate objective of the foundation is “to be able to contribute to the perpetuation of the work of Joseph Pilates by complementing the Studio’s activity in the education and training of qualified instructors in the Pilates system.”

In 1976 John Steel, who until then had been Clara’s right-hand man and one of the promoters of the Studio in recent years, announced in a letter to the members of the Pilates Studio Inc. that, after more than five years dedicated to the Studio as director, he resigned due to lack of time. Before announcing his decision, he spoke at length with Romana Kryzanowska about the new responsibilities he would have to assume.

The ENTIRE board of directors of the Foundation supported the idea of ​​Romana becoming the person in total charge of the business from that moment on. Let us remember that for some years Romana had already held the position of director of the Studio but not of the Foundation. John Steel transferred her shares to him, so that she was left with 66 percent. Romana called a new board of directors to discuss the new situation, since she did not want to be the new director of the company and she suggested other people for the meeting who could fill the vacant position. Romana’s nominees were Cathy di Montezemolo, Gloria Milliken, Dan Reed, Emre J. Rosenthal, Lari Staton, Arthur J. Steel and Robert Sweet.

Very shortly after, Romana would become the owner of the entire business and take the reins of the Foundation, just before Clara’s death on May 13, 1977. The beautiful and humble summary of all the above, and that’s how I remember it. and probably many of you, is wonderfully described in the following paragraph in Romana’s own words.

Romana did not even think about spending the rest of her life teaching Controlology that she loved so much, since “she didn’t have time to think about the future, she was too busy working and trying to keep things going as usual.”

Each artist is the creator of his or her work, and the case of Romana con Controlología is no exception. She became, and over time we see it more clearly, the creator of her own interpretation of her work bequeathed by Joe. The Controlology is the masterpiece created by Joe and inherited legally and legitimately by Romana, who transmitted it to all of us, and especially to her beloved daughter Sari Mejía.

SECOND

WHAT IS THE LEGACY OF LA ROMANA ABOUT?

When Daria asked me to do this talk today, to talk about Romana’s life and her legacy, I did not understand why or what significance this could have in our Conference, since we have written a lot about her in the Biography of Joe Pilates, and I have spoken at the last Congresses where I have participated and in addition, all my colleagues who studied with her remember her and incorporate her every day into their teachings, just as Romana did every day with Joe Pilates and Clara.

After several weeks of idly reflecting, I thought it was an honor and an obligation to take advantage of this important opportunity. We call ourselves, we defend ourselves and we present ourselves to the world under her name and it is our obligation to remember and honor her more than ever.

There is a tendency for human beings to forget their origins and their past, instead of learning from them and at the same time giving them their deserved place in history. In these times of new technologies, the rapidity in considering what happened yesterday as old and obsolete and consequently the ethical change in our behavior and way of seeing the world, we must prevent the same thing that happened with Romana from happening. with Joe We can’t relax her memory of someone like her because we bear her name and we’re trying to carry on her legacy. We must be constant in our efforts and try to correct the mistakes of the past and do justice. I remember that, ultimately, Justice would mean “giving each person what they deserve.”

And we say that we cannot relax in this sense because the new generations, and there are too many years without her, too many students and new teachers around the world, who have not met Romana personally.

The work and its author cannot be dissociated. Therefore, to understand the work we must necessarily know the character who produced this work. In the case of Romana, and for those of us who have known her, it is impossible not to remember her in every step we take in our daily lives.

We have the duty to make known the person behind our name, and take advantage of this Conference to celebrate that she continues and will continue to live in our hearts and spirits. The Controlology that we have learned inextricably bears her mark, since it was she who brought it to us from Joe Pilates.

We have already heard in detail at the beginning of this speech how Romana inherited everything from her marriage. And the big question we should ask ourselves now is what have we inherited from Romana Kryzanowska? What makes us all different?

My opinion on this issue is mainly his ethical and philosophical legacy related to Controlology more than in the choreographic or apparatusological sense where his contribution also bears the seal of his mastery and genius. But before developing this point, let’s do a very brief review of his biography.

Hold on to your chairs now for a dizzying summary of a life so intense it deserves its fame. We are going to tell her life chronologically and avoiding mentioning almost all the specific dates and many details, which has been very difficult due to the emotional attachment he has towards her.

We are going to place Romana’s birth in a family context to understand from the beginning how it was decisive for the rest of her life.

On his father’s side we will have to travel to Poland and Russia to locate his grandparents. He, a military engineer, and she, Countess Felsra of Warsaw.

The second child of the marriage was Romana’s father. Roman Krzyzanowsky, born in Balta, Russia. Roman’s aristocratic name was Count Romano de Ferry Krizanowsky Donanoff of Russia.

After the divorce of Romana’s grandparents, the mother and the children settled in Saint Petersburg and the father emigrated to the United States.

Romana’s young father traveled and studied painting in various places in Europe, including Paris, before emigrating and settling permanently in Detroit.

On the mother’s side of Romana’s ancestors are the Picketts, originally from North Carolina, and the Burguess-Fishers from Virginia.

Romana’s grandparents, Anderson Jacob Pickett and Melvina Burgess-Fisher, first resided in Shelbyville, Kentucky, where Romana’s mother, Sarah Matilda, was born, and later moved to Farmington, Michigan.

Sarah Matilda Pickett, also a painter, and Roman Krzyzanowsky, met in Detroit and got married in the middle of World War I, with the bad news that the Soviets murdered the entire family that was still in Russia and confiscated all their belongings. estate.

The first thing Romana’s parents did after the First World War was to travel and study painting for a time in various European countries such as France and Spain. Upon returning from their long travels, Romana’s parents lived for a time first in New York and then again in Detroit. After eight years of marriage, they conceive her only daughter, Romana, in Farmington.

In the first six years of her life, Romana remembers the constant smell of paint in her house and it is here, a month before her sixth birthday, when her father Román dies, possibly due to heart failure. This caused enormous trauma due to the infinite love she had for her father.

Life must go on and that is why Romana’s mother remarries the following year to Wilhelm Erich Leesemann, he was none other than Roman’s closest friend and the one who found Roman dead on his couch.

The new Leesemann-Kryzanowsky family moved to live in New Smyrna, Florida, near Daytona. This was the house that Aunt Pauline had there together with the aviator Amelia Earhart. There, with the landscape still half wild and among aromas of orange blossom, Romana will experience her early childhood.

In the last year of school, the very young Romana suffered an illness that forced her mother to make the decision to send her to live in Puerto Rico for a period of one year with her uncle Constant Julian Kryzanowski.

A year later, she returned to live in Detroit with her family and Romana began studying ballet at the School of Dance and Drama and studying piano for two years. At the time, Romana’s mother had divorced her second husband and she found love with an Irish immigrant named Michael Brodigan.

When young Romana finished High School, at the age of 18, she returned to live with her uncle Kryzanowsky in Baltimore with the dream of auditioning and entering the School of American Ballet to finish her career as a dancer. Romana’s director at the dance school was the great Anatole Oboukhoff, whom she still remembered with tears a few months before he died.

Towards the end of 1942, and with her mother back in New York with her third husband, young Romana was nineteen years old and suffering from a heel spur that prevented her from continuing to dance. They visited three different doctors and all three told her that she had to have surgery. Mr. George Balanchine took her to meet someone. It was her friend Joe Pilates.

After the first class with Joe, Romana left the studio quite confused and amazed by «that unusual place» and when she returned home she told her mother that «it was a horrible place, I don’t like it and I don’t want to go back.» She complained that this man had designed an entire class for her and “hadn’t paid special attention to her ankle.” Despite this and forced by her mother, Romana continued visiting Joe Pilates as many times a week as she could.

After a year, Joe asked Romana to help out as an assistant in the studio. Then, Joe, Clara and Romana began a friendship that extended beyond the four walls of the Studio.

During Romana and her mother’s stay in New York, one Saturday afternoon a month, a group of painters from New York’s West Village used to open the doors of their apartments so that other artists and friends could come and see their works. They talked and appreciated their exhibited works, establishing contacts and exchanging opinions about art, pictorial trends, etc.

Romana’s mother was also in this artistic circle, of course. One day, Romana’s mother organized one of these events in her own home and Romana was preparing to attend the ballet matinee at the Metropolitan Opera with some friends from school.

Romana’s mother asked her to stay a while to help with the guests. At that event, Romana was wearing a white dress that hugged her small body tightly and she still walked barefoot around the house to rest her feet from so much “pointe” work. She wore her strawberry blonde hair down and had a beautiful necklace around her neck.

Michael Brodigan, his mother’s third husband and Romana’s stepfather, invited a Peruvian businessman named Pablo José Enrique León Mejía Tupayachi, abbreviated Pablo Mejía, to that day. The attraction between her and Pablo was immediate.

Pablo Mejía was a very wealthy Peruvian businessman from a family of ancient lineage, it is even said that his family tree dates back to the time of the Incas.

According to Romana’s memory, on the second date with Pablo Mejía, he invited her to see the ballet Petrushka and then to dinner at the famous Russian Tea Room on 57th Street. On this same occasion, Pablo asked Román to marry him to which she immediately responded yes.

At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 11, 1944, Roman Romanova, as written on the wedding invitation, just turned twenty-one, and Pablo twenty-nine, were married in the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. .

They had a wedding party with family and friends at Romana’s mother’s apartment and among the guests was the Pilates couple.

The new couple immediately traveled to settle in Peru. Her arrival was announced in the national newspapers and she now calls Romana as Señora Romana de María Mejía, apparently trying to recover the noble title that would correspond to her current position.

Once in Peru, Pablo Mejía showed his new wife all the delights of this country in addition to having a busy social life both day and night, enjoying house parties with friends, walks through picturesque places and discos with orchestras.

Romana was in love with her new country, its culture and its people. Since she arrived in Peru she began to learn and practice Spanish and she also learned to speak a little of a variant of the Quechua language, widespread among the Peruvian Indians.

Romana Kryzanowska finally gives birth to her first child. This is a girl who will be baptized with the name of Sari Salomé. Our Sari.

In her first years in Peru, Romana Kryzanowska used to travel to New York to visit her mother who, before moving permanently to Peru, divorced her third husband and met in New York the man who would become her fourth and last husband in 1950., a tall, blonde, blue-eyed Danish gentleman named Knud von Laub.

Peruvian society lives and will live in the immediate future great social and political upheavals, alternating democratic periods with military coups.

After fourteen years in Peru, Romana Kryzanowska finds it increasingly intolerable to stay there and decides to return to her country. Pablo, her husband, decides to stay for a while to solve his family’s problems and her business. The separation was painful for everyone, but Romana remained firm in her decision, despite having a great life in every sense in South America.

The family, made up of two children, two dogs and two grandparents, moved in early November 1957 to live at Aunt Pauline’s house in Orlando, Florida, where they could enjoy her beautiful garden.

Later, Romana traveled alone to the Big Apple in order to look for work and residence for the rest of her family who live in Florida. She visited the Pilates couple to ask for a job and enrolled again at the School of American Ballet to take classes there since her idea, apart from working at the Pilates Studio, was to return to the stage as a dancer to be able to earn a living. family.

Almost a year after arriving in Florida, Romana and the rest of the family will move to the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

Joe ordered the devices for the new studio from the Gratz-Treitel Company through Romana Kryzanowska. They both knew the firm from before, because Joe had hired them to do some repairs at the studio.

After Joe’s death, after a couple of weeks of mourning in the studio, things continued as before. Romana continued to help Clara run the business by working there part-time.

Three years later, in 1970, Clara Pilates made the decision to retire and to do so she formed a Corporation with the participation of 25 investors, including Romana herself.

In August 1972, the original studio and the 8th Avenue where it was located were no longer ideal locations for clients and they decided to move to the sixth floor of 29 West 56th Street.

In 1973 Sari Mexía (Mejía) returned from Europe where she worked as a dancer and continued for a while longer in different dance groups in New York. She fell in love with a musician named Roberto Pace and married him on December 1, 1974 at the famous St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan.

Clara Pilates would also attend the wedding of Sari Mejía and Roberto Pace, along with other family and friends. Once married, Sari began working part-time with her mother at the Pilates Studio and completely abandoned the world of dans.

In 1975 Romana began a very interesting collaboration with the State University of New York in Purchase. The class was part of the dance curriculum and took place on Fridays. It was mandatory for all students throughout the year. Romana would teach classes for the next seven years, until 1982, giving it the name “Body Correctives.” Sari also used to go sometimes to help her mother.

In April 1977, Clara Pilates suffered a fall that caused her to fracture her hip, for which she had to undergo surgery at St. Clare’s Hospital and in the end she would not go out again because she died there due to complications from her operation at the age of 94. At that time, she Romana already owned the entire business.

Romana Kryzanowska had insurmountable difficulties with the 56th Street studio and was forced in 1984 to sell the business to a client friend named Lari Stanton, owner of a business called Aris Isotoner Gloves, Inc.

Two years later, in 1986, Lari Stanton sold the entire business to Healite, Inc. They then moved the studio in 1988 to 160, East 56th Street, 8th floor between Third Avenue and Lexington Avenue.

Things at the studio continue to get worse when just four months after this move to the new studio, on April 1, 1989, they have to violently close the studio due to non-payment of taxes by the owner of Healite.

A great catastrophe that Romana will save by distributing the devices, her teachers with her clients and students in different places that she already knew and with which she collaborated, such as the fashionable gym at that time called Body Arts on 63rd Street and 3rd Avenue, the chiropractor Howard Schiell and at Drago’s Gym. The rest of the devices and material that she could not place anywhere were provisionally deposited in a storage room.

Romana already had a certain friendship with Dragutin Mehandzi, who had a gym on 57th Street. After talking to him about the possibility of teaching classes in a small corner of his gym, with a single Reformer, he agreed to his request. . At first she went to Sari to teach there, sharing this space with other teachers while Romana went from one place to another until settling permanently at Drago’s Gym in 1991.

Drago’s Gym will become Romama and Sari’s permanent home until 2005, when they will permanently move to Fort Worth to live with their son Paul.

But what have we inherited specifically from Romana? What is it that gives us a particular and unique seal?

And these questions make more sense than ever in these times. Advertising and consumption have distorted the method, reducing it only to aesthetics, and sometimes simply, to the vulgarization of Contrologia and nonsense. As the great Italian architect Renzo Piano, and Romana herself, said, “what is beautiful is also good”, but it is difficult to combine these terms. Often the dimension remains only on the surface, but it goes much deeper.”

As we all know and must remember, the Pilates method is not a choreography nor a sports performance, but rather an organized exercise under the tutelage of common sense taught to each person in a personalized way.

Knowing the person reveals a way to know their personality, their character and the ethical values ​​imprinted in their work. And we are of the opinion that ethics are the limits of our world, that is why here is the importance of our beloved Romana’s heritage.

In the case at hand, which is Controlology through Romana, we have learned mental and physical work loaded with intrinsic ethical values ​​for the purposes of the method, let’s call it “spiritual”, as was also the desire of Joe Pilates himself. . .

Let’s start with what turned out, that Esperanza and I remember, just two days into the certification program, Romana’s first lesson in this regard. And she told us, as she used to do when she said something very important, looking us in the eyes: “never forget, Respect, Humility and Work, these are the virtues to be a good teacher.” What three words! We have never been able to forget them and they continue to be our pillar and guide to this day.

She inevitably used, as inherent to her mandate when she taught, to whip the spirit of those who took class and those who observed with an ethical burden giving meaning to the movement itself.

Who doesn’t remember her speaking and solving problems proposing the exercise of Common Sense. Another impressive lesson that forced those who learned with her to develop and improve this fundamental aspect not only for teaching the method but also for the rest of the activities. in your ordinary life.

These and other ethical categories are the foundations of our Contrologia. And these pillars are what make us remember our job, what place us precisely in the place that corresponds to us in this legacy. And it is our obligation and duty, with the confidence that what we have been taught is correct, perfect and complete, to understand, with practice and will, this colossal inherited legacy.

Not only have we inherited the ethical burden of what we do, but this inheritance is also completed with its reflections and synthesis on the system that have no other qualification than genius, such as the creation of the six fundamental principles: Center, Control, Concentration. , Flow, Breathing and Precision.

And thus we arrive at another enormous contribution of Romana’s genius, although she attributed it to Joe, which are the five parts of the mind to be a good teacher and student, not a client, of Controlology. Namely, Imagination, Intelligence, Intuition, Memory and Will.

You will forgive us a small incursion into our preferences, choosing among them all the Will as the most powerful and fundamental, without which others would be «lame», without support. So, without this fundamental and elemental part, the will, the other parts of the mind that Romana cites could not work together nor would they have the coordination that is needed between them.

One of the many meanings that the word Wiil can have is “to achieve by force of will”, and to paraphrase Joe “the primordial essence of the Pilates system is mental discipline.” For Romana, that is so true that that word was constantly in her mouth, recommending it to clients and students as the only way to obtain something in life. Discipline is the key, and for this we must first obtain a strong Will. Thus discipline together with perseverance become the science of all sciences to walk correctly in Controlology.

I am a person who particularly loves classical music in general. When I like a piano concerto, for example, by a particular composer, I usually hear the same piece by many different performers. The score remains exactly the same but what varies is the interpretation of this score, without changing a note.

We also think of Romana as our composer and our role is solely to achieve a correct and wonderful interpretation of her score. No more, no less, and that is why we proudly carry her name behind our backs.

This same idea positions us, as Leonard Bernstein himself said in a CBS program in 1960, under our “performance instinct”, or going even further, with the “artistic gift”. In our opinion, this should be Romana’s legacy to her students, offering us this “artistic gift”, this type of artistic freedom over her score.

Let’s teach each one to be their own teacher and we must put aside everything we think we know and contribute to the method because Romana’s heritage is complete and perfect. And we call ourselves and present ourselves to the world under his name. Her legacy does not need additions but a wonderful interpretation of her score. We are masters of something greater than ourselves and accepting it in this way frees ourselves and the world for the purposes of Controlology.

To conclude this approach to Romana’s legacy, I am going to summarize it with a testimony that came to me unexpectedly from our beloved teacher Diana Bolaños, who has also wonderfully translated this text. I think she gets to the bottom of the matter in a simple, straightforward and correct way, just the way Romana liked it. Let’s remember that simple is better than complicated and that Less is More as Romana constantly reminded us.

“I had the joy of meeting Romana in person and sharing with her several moments that I treasure. But I always see and feel Romana through the eyes of Sari and Daria and of you, the Level Masters, who lived with her and learned hundreds of things. thanks to her wonderful gifts that were given to him. When everyone talks about Romana or shows us how she passed on her heritage to them, her eyes light up and I can feel Romana’s heritage, like a kind of DNA that for me is not present genetically but rather in spirit.”