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With her unique way of exercising, Lotte Berk and her successors have shown women how to shape and tone their bodies for the last half century.

Lotte was born in Cologne, Germany in 1913 as the daughter of a wealthy Russian father and a German mother.

As a young lady she made her name as a modern ballet dancer but being Jewish meant that life in Germany in the 1930’s would become more and more dangerous for her. She was even banned from public performances by the Nazis.

With her English dancer husband Ernest, her maid and her young daughter Esther, Lotte fled Germany in 1933 and came to London with nothing but a suitcase. Here she continued her dancing at Covent Garden, with The Ballet Rambert and in numerous West End shows.

Lotte danced for the next 20 years until following an accident, she was forced to give up her stage career. A dramatic point in her life. What now?

With the help of an osteopath, Lotte devised her exercise regime, first for herself and then for teaching others.

In 1959 she opened her small basement studio in Manchester Street in London’s West End. She called it: “The shabbiest studio in the world” but she loved it and this is where she was her happiest.

Many hundreds of women exercised on her carpet: Secretaries, Housewives and many famous faces such as Britt Ekland, Joan Collins and Yasmin Le Bon.

It took a few years for her name to spread, but since then her method has been taught throughout London, the UK, South Africa, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and across America.

Lotte died in 2003 at the age of 90 after a full and varied life.

Lotte once said: “My life philosophy? I refuse to be unhappy, to give in, to be ill… I wake up every morning and say ‘Now, what’s happening today?’ and I look for something that’s good, that’s going to make me feel happy. If I wake up feeling low, I determine to change it by finding something, however small, that will turn the day into something better and make it all worthwhile…”
VOGUE,1982

Even in her eighties Lotte still visited her studio at Manchester Street every morning.