Jennifer Kries is an author, Pilates master teacher, yoga instructor, and lifestyle expert. Jennifer is regularly a guest lecturer and instructor at renowned educational health institutions and spa facilities worldwide.
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She is featured in the July 2013 issue of Pilates Style Magazine. Jennifer is a true Pilates pioneer and was the first to bring Pilates to the masses with her award-winning videos and DVDs The Method Series, and Fox/Fit TV’s The Method Show that revolutionized the fitness community and started the explosive wave of enthusiasm for Pilates mind-body exercise.
Jennifer discovered Pilates’ timeless principles at age thirteen in a Mat class at New York’s School of American Ballet given by Pilates disciple, Eve Gentry. She went on to study with two more of Pilates’ original disciples, Romana Kryzanowska and Ron Fletcher and she holds a certification through the original Pilates Studio under Romana Kryzanowska. She made her professional debut at sixteen in George Balanchine’s Serenade with Edward Villella’s Eglevsky Ballet. After becoming a member of Pennsylvania Ballet, she was discovered by Shimon Braun of Philadelphia’s Waves Jazz Dance Company. She quickly rose to the rank of principal, as well as making guest appearances with Philadanco, the Bat Sheva Dance Company, Lar Lubovitch, Roland Petit’s Ballet de Marseilles, Opus I Contemporary, Balletto di Toscana in Florence, and in film, Donald Byrd’s The Next Step. Her choreography and teaching credits include New York City Ballet, Hubbard Street Chicago, Pennsylvania Ballet Summer residencies, and Sade’s music video No Ordinary Love. She founded her own company, Contemporary Dance Theatre New York in 1997 and has choreographed several seasons of work in New York City.
As a professional dancer and yoga devotee, she brings a dynamic and progressive, yet traditional perspective to her Pilates teaching. As one of the world’s preeminent mind-body master teachers, she is responsible for launching many of today’s most respected professionals who teach either traditional Pilates or The Method, her trademark mind-body synthesis: Pilates, yoga, and dance. She is the founder of New York’s Balance Pilates, Yoga, and Dance; and Hot Body Cool Mind—The Studio in Philadelphia, and most recently, creator and producer of yet two other ground-breaking DVD series, Hot Body Cool Mind: The Life Force Power Workout which presents the best of Pilates, Yoga and Dance and Jennifer Kries The Pilates Method Master Trainer Series. In addition, she is a presenter at Balanced Body: Pilates on Tour. Jennifer is a member and supporter of the PMA and has shared her story and the reasons why she supports the PMA on her blog.
In addition to Pilates, she has practiced yoga since 1988 and has been teaching since 1995. She trained with Lindsey Clennell at the Iyengar Institute in New York City, with Alan Finger, Founder of the ISHTA System and BeYoga Studios, New York City, with Sarah Powers, master teacher of Yin Yoga and Buddhist meditation at the Kripalu Center in Lenox, Massachussetts and with the esteemed Kofi Busia, one of B.K.S. Iyengar’s renowned Senior teachers. The synergy of her Pilates and Yoga background, her intensive study of anatomy with renowned exercise physiologist and movement scientist, Irene Dowd, coupled with her own study of eastern philosophies and schools of movement such as the “soft arts” of Qigong and Bone Marrow Nei Kung with Qigong Masters, Mantak Chia, and Roger Jahnke led Jennifer to develop her new Hot Body Cool Mind system.