Tatyana Stahler: Dancer, founder of Pilates studio

How did you first get involved in movement?

I have been moving — my mom likes to say — since I came out. Movement has been always a big part of how I understand the world and how I understand myself. I feel best when I’m moving.

I grew up dancing. I did competitive dance as a kid. I did musical theater in high school. I went to college knowing that I wanted to dance and study movement. College is when I learned about Pilates and fell in love with that as well.

Why did you settle on working in Pilates?

I got into Pilates because I’m a dancer, and dance is really dynamic and versatile, and often big — like we’re moving across the stage or across the studio in really big ways, which can sometimes lead to injury. 

It was almost like I fell into Pilates, I was able to go: “Whoa! This is a way for me to slow down, but still move.” It also really satisfied my personal interest in how the body works and how it functions. 

Once I started teaching, I really loved the community aspect of it. I liked working with other folks that maybe didn’t do dance or they have never done Pilates before. So it was a way to kind of find a common language and find commonality together and be able to bring them into that world.

So you still dance, right?

I am a member of Bellingham Repertory Dance. We’re an arts nonprofit and we focus on contemporary dance. We’re all administratively running the company as members of the nonprofit, and then dancing in performances, leading classes in the community, teaching youth intensives.

I’ve been a member for almost 10 years, so it’s been a big part of my life. 

It’s one of the reasons I moved back to Bellingham after college. I’m so lucky that I still get to dance post-college because that can be kind of rare sometimes, but we do performances at least two times a year.

What about Bellingham speaks to you? Why is this where you’re making your home?

I did try to leave Bellingham, but Bellingham will be my home forever.

I really fell in love with this sense of like there’s always neighborly love, and I see that here in the studio as well, literal neighbors coming to practice together. There’s this sense of like everyone in the community of Bellingham wants there to be more good and more positivity and more love. 

I also am so grateful for the arts community here. To have such a vibrant arts community in the size of a town that we live in, it’s pretty incredible.

People might not even realize how lucky we are to have the amount of theater and dance and music and music festivals coming in — and all of the richness that provides is something pretty unique and pretty special.

I feel home here. I feel welcome here. I feel safe here. And, so does my neighbor and my friends and the people that I love. That’s why I will always be in Bellingham.