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Kate Curtis
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With so many businesses coming and going, Hillsboro Village is hardly recognizable anymore. Rather than lament the construction on every corner, entrepreneur Kate Curtis saw all the movement and growth as an opportunity to set up shop right in the heart of all the development.
'We've lived in this neighborhood for almost eight years, and a Pilates studio just hadn't popped up in the area,” the founder of Pilates Garage says. 'There's great pedestrian foot traffic, and it was important to me that I could walk to work every day."
Curtis hails from Illinois and followed her musician boyfriend (now husband) to Nashville after college, then worked in corporate event planning for several years. A former track and cross-country runner, she'd practiced Pilates all through high school and eventually decided to pursue her teacher certification, a process that took seven months.
'I loved the benefits that I saw in my own body from doing Pilates,” Curtis says. 'I'm very passionate about it, so I figured if I could make a living doing something I enjoy, then that would be pretty awesome.”
Curtis opened her boutique studio in May in the new Hill Center Acklen, a mixed-use development on the corner of 21st Avenue South and Acklen Avenue. With just six reformers, classes are intimate and allow for more hands-on training. Curtis is also certified as a barre instructor and will occasionally incorporate some of those elements in her classes, the flow of which changes from session to session.
'Reformer Pilates is great because the machine guides you through all the exercises,” she explains. 'With the different springs, you can change the resistanceyou can make it easier so you're just using your own body weight against gravity or you can make it harder so it's more challenging.”
Curtis currently offers five or six classes daily during the week and two on Saturdays, with plans to expand her lineup in the near future. Classes are $30 for a drop-in, and packages of 5, 10, and 20 classes are also available. First-timers get one discounted class at $15, and an unlimited monthly membership runs $300. Because each class has a maximum capacity of six, reservations are recommended.
2106A Acklen Ave, 630-204-5283; pilatesgaragenashville.com