The Pilates Pelvis: Racial Implications of the Immobile Hips

• DOI: 10.1017/s014976771400028x
• Publication Date: 2014-09-18T07:25:22Z
• Authors: Sarah W. Holmes
• Keywords: White (mutation); Kinesthetic learning

This article examines the treatment of pelvis in Pilates exercises “Single Leg Stretch” and “Leg Circles.” The teaching practices hips, as commonly explained educational manuals, reinforce behaviors a noble-class racially “white” aesthetic. Central to this is troubling notion white racial superiority and, specifically, colonizing, prejudicial, denigrating mentality found whiteness its embodied behaviors. Using two exercises, I illuminate how perceived kinesthetic understandings race body may be normalized privileged. By examining intersections between dance history, reveals ways discourses are nature, situates product historically constructed social dominant Anglo-European culture.