Melissa Feeney

It’s the early 1970s. The Lotte Berk Method has opened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and will soon garner a following among the who’s who of New York’s elite. This is the studio that back in 1984 The New York Times called the fanciest accommodations in town and one of the most rigorous workouts for women in New York. This is where Burr Leonard of The Bar Method trained, where a slew of celebrities from Julia Roberts to Caroline Kennedy to Bianca Jagger used to take classes on a regular basis, and where you could argue barre started in America.

Long before boutique barre studios went mainstream, The Lotte Berk Method built a cult-like following and would produce some of the most beloved barre brands in the world today.

The unassuming five-story brownstone on East 67th Street that housed the flagship studio is where you would find women (it began as a women’s only fitness studio) file into any one of the classrooms across three floors of the townhouse at all hours throughout the day.

Although I can try to imagine what it would have been like to do some knee dancing on the deep rose-coloured carpet of this iconic studio, I thought there is no greater pair of people to speak with about their time there than Fred DeVito and Elisabeth Halfpapp to really understand the brand’s lasting impact on the barre community.

Not only were the pair instrumental in the success of the business (Elisabeth and Fred expanded the teacher training program) but were there almost every day, teaching 6 classes a day, 6 days a week, managing the studio and even lived above the studio for a period of time.

Fred and Elisabeth in the Bridgehampton barn in the early ’90s. Source: Elisabeth Halfpapp and Fred DeVito

How The Lotte Berk Method Came to Be

Lydia Bach travelled to London to study Lotte’s technique and eventually purchased the North American rights to her name. Elisabeth explained that she named it after Lotte because she had great respect for what Lotte had started, and so she called her business The Lotte Berk Method Ltd. in her honour.

“Lydia furthered it in many ways, you know with pushups and planks and added a balance of strength and stretching to it as well,” explained Elisabeth on the changes Lydia made to the original technique which included making it into an hour-long class.

In the early days, Lydia was heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. Elisabeth credits Lydia for working one on one with everyone to develop what she considered to be the first barre studio in the United States. “We were really lucky to have her at that point,” said Elisabeth.

Discovering The Lotte Berk Method

Elisabeth was first introduced to the method via an ad in the classified section of the New York Times.

I was a dancer coming from the Hartford Ballet, auditioning in New York and teaching ballet. My audition class was with a teacher who was actually visiting from London, from The Lotte Berk studio there. I was in bed after 9:00 am when I got a call from The Lotte Berk Method. They said they were interested in hiring me and I almost said ‘Are you sure?’ because I couldn’t move. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done.

Fred’s background was in physical education. Having taught in the public school system as well as having been a coach and personal trainer, he credits his experience in teaching to making the transition to The Lotte Berk Method an easy one. “I saw what Lis was doing with The Lotte Berk Method and I said ‘oh my god,’ I need to teach people how to do this.” Fred also happened to be the studio’s first male barre teacher.

Immersion was the best way to learn

A year after being hired, Elisabeth started to run the studio. “I managed the studio, I teacher trained. I taught 6 classes a day, 6 days a week. Pretty much immersed myself.”

At that point, there was no manual. “Our training really was classroom teaching. You take 4 classes a day, 6 days a week and then you teach,” said Elisabeth.

The original help wanted ad in The New York Times that Elisabeth answered.

The who’s who of New York and beyond flocked to the studio

Thanks to prominent locations in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Hamptons and Los Angeles, The Lotte Berk Method attracted many notable people over the years. From Julia Roberts to Melanie Griffith, to Brooke Shields, there are just too many to name but as you can imagine, having studios located in premium markets helped to bring in a high-end clientele.

When I asked if they could recall any great stories, Elisabeth had this to say: “I really have to jog my mind to think about those special people who came because they were such a part of the group that they don’t stand out unless I really think about it. We never put them on a pedestal and I think they really appreciated that.”

In our Hamptons studio, we would have up to 6 or 7 high-profile celebrities in one class. Actresses, actors, directors, artists. In NYC we would have Julia Roberts coming every day, you know dress down, no makeup, in her sweats. She would be hanging out before class just like… People would have to do a double-take, isn’t that Julia Roberts? One time someone asked, “Are you, Julia Roberts? You look just like her.” It was so cute, she laughed and said “I am.”

On teaching notable clients, Fred recalled some advice that Lydia passed down to them. “Treat celebrities like you treat everybody else. They need something from you. They need the workout, they have injuries that need to be taken care of, they’re coming to you for your expertise. Don’t be starstruck by it all.”

We got into this routine and habit of not being starstruck and just talking to people no matter who they were, we would talk to everybody the same way, no matter whether you were a housekeeper or a babysitter for somebody coming in or you were a high-profile celebrity, we just treated everybody the same, so that made it really easy for people to all be in the same class together. And a lot of celebrities felt very comfortable.

The other locations

The Lotte Berk Method’s Bridgehampton location (where SoulCycle is now) was a 1600 square foot potato barn that Lydia renovated into a “very open, airy space” studio according to Elisabeth. “It had all sliding glass doors on one side of the studio that overlooked (back then) farm fields.”

Clients were vocal about wanting a studio in the Hamptons since that’s where they summered. “She decided Bridgehampton because it’s centrally located between South and East Hampton,” recalled Elisabeth. “We limited it to 12 people per class but by the time we left, we had 3 classes going on and there were over 60 people on the hour coming through.”

Ads for The Lotte Berk Method Bridgehampton location from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

In 1983 The Lotte Berk Method opened at Sunset Plaza and West Hollywood in Los Angeles. The pair moved to LA. before being called back to New York at the end of ’83 when the Master Teacher-Trainer left the Manhatten location.

A day in the life

A typical day according to Elisabeth and Fred was a busy one. With multiple studios available, they could have three different classes taking place at one time. “We had classes going on every floor, three classes on the hour. At 7:00, 7:15, 7:30 am and continued all day long until 8:00 pm at night,” Elisabeth explained. “We would teach 3 classes in the morning and 3 classes in the evening, take a break in the afternoon, do any other work like teacher training, or client relationship things, shooting for articles etc.”

[Classes] were all by appointment before computers… it was all hand-written check-in. We had little cards that we would just mark and check people off when they came in.

Fred explained that most of the morning classes were filled with the same women every day. The same women in the same class every morning meant that they got to know each other very well. The “zoo-ey” nature as Fred described was part of the reason why they wanted to make classes more mindful. “It was like pulling teeth, you could not get these women into a mindful place,” Fred recalled.

People would walk into the room and then they would start talking before class started. It was like a school cafeteria, very loud talking about their kids and where they went and the restaurants and their social life and whatever… We came in with a policy and we said, look when you walk into the classroom, we’d like to treat it more like a sanctuary, like sit on the carpet, close your eyes, breathe, meditate, just be alone with yourself for a while. If you wanted to chitchat just do that out in the hallway.

Impacting the barre landscape

At one point during my interview, I wondered if there was anyone who hadn’t gotten their start there. You can trace so many barre brands back to this one method. Instructors and clients who have gone on to build some of the biggest franchises, studios and methods out there today. From Carrie Dorr at Pure Barre, to Burr Leonard of The Bar Method, Tanya Becker and Jennifer Maanavi of Physique 57, and of course Fred and Lis who would go onto create Exhale and then CoreBarreFit, and the list goes on and on and on.

“Bar Method was actually our first and only license,” says Elisabeth, explaining that before Burr Leonard went on to open The Bar Method, Burr opened up a Lotte Berk Method in Greenwich Connecticut followed by three more locations in the state. For a decade she ran those studios before deciding not to renew the license after the 10-year agreement was up.

We trained her as a teacher to open up her license of The Lotte Berk Method. She is probably the closest to The Lotte Berk Method besides Fred and me, even though everything continues to evolve.

How one business could make such a lasting impact on the barre industry

Wondering if there was something in the water since so many notable brands can be traced back to this one method, I asked Fred and Lis if they could pinpoint anything specifically.

I think Fred and I created a really thorough teacher training program. We cared about everyone who came in. We were hands-on teaching all those classes each week and hands-on with our teachers. I think it was that care and camaraderie, that inspired a lot of teachers to become who they are.

Fred also pointed out that the exercises themselves helped their word of mouth efforts. “I think one of the hooks is that it works,” said Fred. “When people see results it’s like wildfire. Their friends see their bodies changing and want to know what they’re doing.”

We got more business from word of mouth referral than any other way. There were more people wanting to take the class than there was actual space. It was just like one of those great restaurants that you can’t get in, we were that. Even in Bridgehampton, we were the only exercise studio in Bridgehampton back in the late ’80s, ’90s and up to 2000s. There was no competition so people would flock there.

“We became real disciples of the work because of the results that we saw and the benefits that people would have from it and that’s why it became so popular,” said Elisabeth.

At the time boutique fitness wasn’t what it is today. It was somewhat novel, especially in the early 1970s for women to go to a fitness studio to exercise. Elisabeth remembered when a female client asked “What are these droplets on my arm?” Lydia told her, “that’s sweat, my dear.”

What happened to the Lotte Berk Method?

Lydia preferred to keep her operation small, despite numerous opportunities to expand. So why didn’t she? For one, “Lydia was an absentee owner,” Elisabeth explains. “It was pretty much just Fred and I.” Near the end of the studio’s run, she was living in India for half the year. “Lydia was never there except maybe 2 months out of the year.”

Fred and Elisabeth departed The Lotte Berk Method and opened Exhale [Exhale Spa at the time], which was successful in its own right with the pair at the helm for two decades. “That’s another reason we wanted to move on to Exhale,” said Elisabeth. “It could have been expanded globally. When we left she closed a few years later because we did pretty much everything. She was left with no teacher training procedures or a team to help develop a training program. That’s one of the reasons it didn’t go beyond Lydia Bach.”

She was a genius when she was at her best. The barre fitness world would not be where it is today if it were not for her. Lotte, yes, Lotte was the seed in London but Lydia is really who brought it to the forefront. She was a challenging individual but we learned so much from her.

Successful as the business was, it was not without controversy

Did Lotte have regret signing away those North American rights? In her 2020 memoir How to Live and Die, Lotte’s daughter Esther Fairfax had this to say about the decision.

In America, Lotte Berk had a truly huge presence. Only no one was teaching it as authentically as Mother had–and because of a foolish decision she’d made to sign away the American rights years ago, she had not been able to set the record straight by training or publishing books there. Her hands had been tied, truly handcuffed, and no matter how hard the lawyers tried they could not break the contract. Sadly, no one could use the name Lotte Berk in the States unless they were licensed by the one person who had taken it from Mother so cunningly all those years ago. My mother just had to watch as her technique was misinterpreted and mistaught.

The legacy lives on

The Lotte Berk Method was one of the most successful fitness brands of the 20th century. When exercise fads come and go, it’s no easy feat to sustain interest over more than three decades.

“I’m just tickled pink to see where barre is at today from that little studio at 23 East 67th Street,” said Elisabeth. “What is amazing is that we still teach a lot of the same clients we had back then and their children and some even their grandchildren. It’s just so wonderful to continue the journey with so many people after all these years.”

The Lenox Hill brownstone where the Lotte Berk Method housed their operation in New York is now the site of luxury apartments, art galleries and high-end retail.

Want to know more?

Fred and Elisabeth are going to dive into the history of barre during their lunch and learn session of the same name during this year’s Virtual Barre Summit. You don’t want to miss it! This year’s summit takes place online over two weekends beginning October 16. Visit barresummit.com for more details and to purchase tickets. The Barre Blog is proud to be the event’s Media Partner. Look out for more complimentary content in the weeks to come!