A woman with glasses, wearing a black tank top, gray pants, and light blue ankle weights, sitting on a Pilates spine corrector on a black Pilates mat in a room with a white brick wall and a tall green plant in a white pot to her right.

Meet Dana

Founder & Teacher, Studio Vitality
More than twenty years of teaching.

I’ve built my practice on a simple belief: that real progress comes from understanding, not just doing. The most meaningful work happens when a teacher can give you their full attention and explain the why behind every movement.

Like many of my clients, I found Pilates through my own body. After giving birth to my two children, I was looking to rebuild my strength and fitness. It led me to Pilates. I started in the contemporary world, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me stop there. I’ve always been a student at heart, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to understand where this work truly came from. That search led me to comprehensive, lineage-based Pilates: Joseph Pilates’ original Controlology. It changed how I move, and how I teach, for good.

I trained comprehensively in the lineage-based method through the Authentic Pilates Learning Center in the direct teaching tradition passed down from Joseph Pilates himself. But I’ve never treated training as something you finish. I continue to study today in advanced work with David Keith, deepening my understanding across the first-generation lineages of Pilates. That ongoing study has taught me to tell the difference between what is structural to the method and what is simply personal style, between principle and preference, and to keep asking why an exercise exists and what it prepares the body to do.

 I’m also an E-RYT 500 registered yoga teacher, which informs the breath and whole-body awareness I bring to every session.

I opened Studio Vitality in 2014. Today, by choice, I focus on what I love most and do best: private, one-on-one instruction. I’ve come to think of what we do here less as a workout and more as a work in. Pilates is a progression, built on stepping stones — we don’t skip the foundation, and we don’t mistake intensity for strength. We build strength through control, at the pace your body is ready for. No crowds. No rushing. Just you, me, and a practice designed entirely around your body.

I’d be honored to help you discover what your body is capable of.

My Approach

Every body is different, so every session is. We start where you are, and build with precise technique. You’re never handed a routine — you’re taught. You’ll understand what we are doing and why.

Private yoga is also available on request, drawing on my E-RYT 500 training.