Working up a sweat gracefully

After years of sports and exercise, I was getting burned out on extreme, push-yourself-to-the-limits, no-pain-no-gain workouts. I was looking for something gentler. Something that made me feel more like a graceful dancer than a grunting Neanderthal.

The problem was narrowing down the options. In recent years, sports clubs around the country have started offering ballet-based fitness classes such as Ballet Pilates, Ballet Boot Camp, Ballet Barre and Stretch, and Yoga Booty Ballet.

Even small dance studios, such as Heartbeat House Studio in Silver Lake, have ballet workouts, and some mainstream gyms, such as the Hollywood YMCA, are offering adult ballet classes. Also, the New York City Ballet (in conjunction with Palm Pictures) has produced a set of workout DVDs for those who dream of a dancer’s physique.

The amount of ballet in the classes varies. Some classes are almost pure ballet, some barely ballet at all. I wanted the body of a ballerina, long and lean, full of grace. I wanted to feel light on my toes, perpetually poised to pirouette. I also wanted to sweat.

I chose a class called LA Ballet Body at Equinox in West Hollywood. The course description promised to combine barre, center and floor work with innovative weight training and a focus on balance and posture.

“You don’t have to wear a tutu,” said Keith Irace, the group fitness manager at Equinox, when I called to inquire about the class. It’s more about developing the muscles of a dancer, he said, than leaping across the studio in a choreographed dance routine.

I confess, I kind of wanted to leap.

But undeterred, I turned up at 9 a.m. on a Monday for the class. Our teacher was David Gray, a fitness instructor with training in ballet and jazz. He had a dancer’s body and an attitude that alternated between your favorite catty confidante and a boot camp drill sergeant. The class was all women, ranging in age from the 20s to 50s.

We got right down to work.

“If anyone doesn’t want to do the grand plies, just do the demis,” Gray shouted, as he pumped up the music. Uh-oh, I thought. Was I going to need a dancer’s dictionary to get through this class?

I looked around. With their straight backs, slender necks and telltale turned out feet, many of my classmates looked as if they had taken ballet for years.

I’d taken ballet when I was 5, prancing about in a pink leotard and cutoff tights. At my peak, I wore a tutu and bloomed like a flower on stage. Then my very short dance career ended; now I couldn’t even remember the five basic positions. That was OK. Whether or not you understood the occasional French phrases Gray shouted over the music, you could follow the moves.

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A pumping start

The 10-minute warm-up was like aerobics with a few plies thrown in. There was no Tchaikovsky here; this was club music, loud, with a heavy beat.

“This is ballet boot camp,” Gray shouted over the music. “C’mon y’all.”

By the end of the warm-up, I was sweating. But that was just the beginning. The music slowed down, got mellower, as we moved into the workout. We danced (and panted) to Queen Latifah, Eartha Kitt, “California Dreamin’” and “La Vie en Rose.” We did a series of demis and grand plies, our arms fluttering from our sides to over our heads.

“Easily,” Gray coached. “Don’t jerk.”

Then we put our feet in first position (feet turned out, heels together), our arms over our heads, and went up and down, and up and down, and up and down. My calves burned and still we kept going. Gray circled the class, pushing in our stomachs, straightening our backs, our necks, our arms -- making us stand tall like ballerinas.

Finally, we stood on our toes, arms in a delicate “O” overhead, balancing for what seemed like an eternity. My heart rate monitor showed that my heart rate had soared to 140. Several participants tried to grab a drink of water, but Gray called us back.

We put our toes to knees (in pirouette position), hands overhead, and went from side to side. We lunged and went up on our toes. We kicked our feet in the air, did more plies, and then a butt-searing series of battement tendus (standing straight with one leg on the floor, the other leg extending straight back with toe pointed).

For almost the entire class we held our arms out to the sides and tried to arch our fingers gracefully. It looks easy, but feels like torture. We ended with frenzied hops from side to side, one pointed toe tucked into the inner knee. By this time we looked like a troupe of broken ballerinas.

When we finally stopped leaping, bending, tendu-ing and plie-ing, the class let out a collective “ah” of pain and relief.

We finished with five minutes of mat work, pointing our toes and stretching our legs. I looked at my heart-rate monitor. I’d burned 311 calories in an hour.

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Moving off the mat

Gray said the impetus for the class was to create a body sculpting workout that got people off the Pilates mat and moving around. More than anything, the class works to improve balance, posture and coordination. “This is all in the hope of teaching people how to do weight placement and how to use their core,” Gray said. “When you do tendus, you have to keep your weight centered. That same balance and coordination will come in handy on the weight-lifting floor.”

I can personally testify that the class is also a great workout for calves, thighs and arms.

Marci Alpert, 33, a former fitness instructor, agreed. She’d stumbled into the LA Ballet Body class in search of variety.

“Actually it’s a hard class,” said Alpert, who studied ballet for 14 years. “It’s one of the harder classes they have here.”

Marianne Gardner, 57, used to take ballet many years ago and was here for her second class.

“I love it,” said Gardner. “I think he’s fabulous.” She said the ballet steps and positions were coming back to her, slowly, but that was all right, because the class was “less traditional.”

I was sore after class and I knew I’d be sorer tomorrow. But I felt tall and lissome. My posture felt better than it had in years, my movements more elegant. I hoped that maybe, just maybe, for this one day, someone would look at me, with my straight back, my statuesque carriage, and think, “Oh, she carries herself like a dancer.”

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Hilary MacGregor can be reached at Hilary.MacGregor @latimes.com