UC Riverside

This project examines the teaching methodologies, exercises, and Principles of the exercise practice commonly known as Pilates from a Critical Dance Studies perspective. Muscle memory, or embodied knowledge, is significant to dance scholarship in that embodied knowledge houses important unwritten cultural, social, and political histories. This project examines the racial, gendered, and class-based issues embedded in the exercises and Principles of Pilates, revealing the ways that the embodied discourses Pilates perpetuates are "white" in nature, and work to conceal and absent other cultural histories.