Pic: Author John Steele with Joe and Clara
Issue #316 – Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Review of Caged Lion
by Reiner Grootenhuis
As a Pilates Intel regular, you probably read the excerpt from John Howard Steel’s recently published “Caged Lion” here a few weeks ago. Time for a review and also, as a frame of reference, a brief review of the Pilates history published prior to his book.
As you might know, I am a bit of a Pilates history enthusiast. Once the Pilates bug hit me, I tried to find out as much as possible about the heritage of the Pilates method. At that time, there were hardly any biographies about Joseph Pilates, besides some myths repeated on many webpages. What a joy when Esperanza Aparicio & Javier Pérez Pont published Hubertus Joseph Pilates – The Biography in 2013. This extremely well-researched work has provided all of us with a true treasure chest filled with valuable information to enjoy for years to come. In 2015, Eva Rincke published the German version of her Joseph Pilates biography which provided, in contrast, much more storytelling about Joe and the time he lived in. What a pleasure to read!
With those cornerstones in place, the interest shifted to the first generation of teachers. In this field, Kristi Cooper did an incredible job at Pilates Anytime when she launched the Legacy project in 2013 to bring light to their lives and teachings. Her work compiles video biographies about all these first-generation teachers and interviews with their students, plus videos of them showing the work of their teachers.
More recently, several books have been published about these first generation teachers: Cathy Strack’s Love All Around: The Biography of Romana Kryzanowska; my own small contribution with Carola Trier: The first woman ever to open a Pilates studio – Portrait of an extraordinary journey and The Pilates Effect: Heroes Behind the Revolution by Sarah W. Holmes and Stacey Redfield.
Considering the ground already covered by those five books, it seemed we had a fairly complete picture of the man and his followers. For me, that changed in May when John Howard Steel published Caged Lion: Joseph Pilates and His Legacy.
Having already seen some interviews with him, I was interested in learning more about his time with Clara and Joseph. Reading his book was like receiving a backstage pass to meet those two in a completely different environment. I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone, but I will let you know these moments were very precious to me. And if your intention in reading this review was to know whether or not to buy the book, my answer is simply “Yes. Buying Caged Lion is worth it for those parts alone.”
However, in addition to that, you will gain a clearer perspective on the years after Joe’s death – how the clients did everything possible to keep the studio alive and how they actively looked for a potential successor for the studio. It came as a surprise to me how unaware these clients (and also Steel himself) were about Carola Trier’s flourishing studio only a few blocks away. In fact, many of them thought it was merely a small “teaching from home” thing. Perhaps Carola was wise enough to never boast about her flourishing business when she was helping out in the original studio.
The fifty or so remaining longtime customers thought they alone carried the burden of keeping Clara and Joseph’s work alive, thinking they were trapped on an island, but not knowing that there were other Pilates teachers out there. When we follow Steel’s storyline, we learn that he actually had to persuade Romana Kryzanowska to take the job – a fact I did not know before. I had heard that other teachers, like Eve Gentry, who had been asked to take over the studio, kindly declined. However, I was not aware that Ramona wasn’t sure about whether to take over the studio or to concentrate instead on the ballet world.
Without revealing too much, the events up to and including the famous trademark lawsuit are something that caused quite some brouhaha in the Romana lineage. Some has said that a number of statements in the book, notably those about Romana, are false and that the way Steel presented her was not ideal.
Although I have to say that going through all book passages where Romana is mentioned, I can only see his appreciation for her. In the Pilates Book Review Club on Facebook, the discussion became so heated that Steel himself participated, clearly stating that “The book reflects that (a) Romana saved Pilates and (b) Romana was a master teacher. No one who studied under Romana could ever feel that they didn’t receive the best education possible.” – which I hope resolves this controversy related to the book
Pictured above are John with Pilates teacher Amy Havens (a Pilates Intel contibutor), who is making sure he does “Eve’s Lunge” correctly at her studio, CenterPoint Pilates in Santa Barbara.
While most of the book deals with Pilates history, the final three chapters offer a completely different tone: one about the possible “Origin” of the method, one about “The Deep Attraction” of Pilates, and one presenting an imaginary dialogue between Joseph Pilates and John Howard Steel.
The “Origin” chapter offers an alternative to the story that Joseph Pilates himself told when reporting to have been incarcerated as a civilian in the World War I “because the Brits did not want German nationals running about in England to spy or do sabotage for their homeland.” Steel hypothesizes that, in truth, Joe was a prisoner of war and therefore was “confined to a small space, like a jail cell or a crowded barrack, with limited freedom to move.” (both quotes are from the book). Whether there is any truth to this is hard to tell. I leave this up to you when reading this chapter for yourself.
“The Deep Attraction” part offers some interesting insights into how Pilates was taught in Joe’s studio (with self-sufficiency as a goal of doing Contrology) compared to today’s Pilates teaching. It certainly provides us with some food for thought.
If I want to nitpick, there are some small inaccuracies in the book, since it wasn’t the Toe Gizmo, which Joseph Pilates patented first but the Foot Corrector. And, contrary to the information provided by the book, Joseph Pilates did not go to Hanover after his time in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. From what I know, he actually went to Hamburg to train the military police. However, these are at best minor issues in an otherwise brilliant book.
So, to conclude, in my opinion, this book is an extremely valuable addition to our previous knowledge about Clara and Joseph Pilates. And I congratulate John Howard Steel for writing it.
ORDER THE BOOK HERE!!
Besides obtaining a diploma in psychology and an MBA, Reiner Grootenhuis has studied the healing and martial arts of the Southern Shaolin Monastery Weng Chun.
He completed the training as a Pilates instructor for Pilates mat and equipment at the Pilates educational academy Body Arts & Science International. Reiner is the founder and operator of the largest Pilates forum worldwide, the pilates-contrology-forum on Facebook, which includes 12,000 Pilates instructors. Moreover, he also offers a free-of-charge immensely successful pilates-contrology-marketplace for selling and buying Pilates equipment on Facebook, which has almost 13,000 members.
At the beginning of 2012, he opened the pilates-powers studio in Tönisvorst, only 25 km away from Joseph Pilate’s hometown.
2014 Kathy Corey appointed him a member of the Board of Directors of the Pilates Heritage Congress, which takes place every two years in the hometown of Joseph Pilates.
In 2017, Reiner completed the Kathy Corey Mentor program, in which he studied the methods and exercises of teachers trained directly by Joseph Pilates such as Kathy Grant, Ron Fletcher, Eve Gentry, Bruce King, and Romana Kryzanowska.
Since November 2017, Reiner has been a Pilates Intel Expert for the online magazine Pilates Intel for which he writes regularly.
Since September 2018, he has been nominated a member of the Certification Committee of the German Pilates Association.
In 2019, Kathy Corey awarded him as Kathy Corey Pilates Master Teacher.
Reiner has published some very positively received manuals: Wunda Chair (2015), Arm Chair (2016) Cadillac part 1 (2018) and 2 (2019), Reformer part 1 and 2 (2020).
He also published in April 2020, the biography ”Carola Trier: The first woman ever to open a Pilates studio – Portrait of an extraordinary journey – Plus: Photos of her Mat and Reformer Exercises.”
BTW, just now his Cadillac Part 1 manual has been published in Korean, with part 2 and the Reformer manuals to follow soon.