THE FOUNDER STORY
The Rockette who came home.
Alana Cosentino danced at Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway before a sprained ankle brought her to Pilates. This is the whole story — fifteen years in the making.
CHAPTER ONE
Radio City.
NYC · late 1990s
Alana grew up in dance. Ballet, jazz, tap, modern — the full catalog of classical training. By her teens she was competing; by her twenties she was on a bus to New York City.
She made the Rockettes. Kicking in sequence with thirty-five other women on the stage at Radio City Music Hall became her job. Six thousand people every night during the Christmas Spectacular season. Eye-lines, eight counts, and sequined precision.
It is, if you have ever watched up close, an athletic act. The kick line looks effortless on television because it is the product of absurd amounts of conditioning.
CHAPTER TWO
Broadway.
A performer's decade
After the Rockettes came Broadway. More shows. More touring. More bodies in wings and dressing rooms and rehearsal halls.
What nobody tells dancers until they're inside it: the performer's life is a series of injuries managed well enough to keep dancing. The ankle you rolled Tuesday is the ankle you have to land on Thursday.
Alana lived that decade honestly. She worked. She healed. She learned that the body was not a tool you used up — it was a partner you negotiated with.
CHAPTER THREE
The ankle.
One injury. One reformer.
Then came the sprain. Mid-show. The kind that ends the evening and starts a conversation with a physiotherapist.
The physio asked what kind of rehab she had ever done. She said: "I'm a dancer. I just dance through it." He said: "Try this."
The reformer — that strange spring-loaded sliding carriage invented by Joseph Pilates in the first half of the twentieth century — was the answer. Alana has said it clearly: "I was learning to engage muscles I never even knew about."
A Rockette discovering muscles she didn't know she had. That is a sentence that explains everything that came next.
CHAPTER FOUR
Coming home.
Canada · certification · 2011
She came back to Canada. She did not want to stop moving but she was ready for the curtain to close on the performer's decade. So she took it seriously and became a student again.
Full Pilates certification. Months of reformer training, mat work, anatomy, cueing, spotting. She studied it the way she had once studied choreography — to teach the body, not just to use it.
Then she needed a studio.
CHAPTER FIVE
Absolute World.
Marilyn Monroe · Suite 107
The Absolute World towers had just opened. The MAD Architects design — those twisting hourglass curves that somebody in the press dubbed "Marilyn Monroe" and the name stuck — was Mississauga's new landmark.
Suite 107 was a ground-floor retail space in the east tower. It had good bones, good light, and it was steps from Square One. Alana signed the lease.
In October 2011, Stacked Pilates & Dance opened. Two reformers. A dream.
CHAPTER SIX
Fifteen years.
2011 → 2026
Two reformers became a fleet of STOTT equipment. One teacher became six. The class schedule grew to cover six days and ten formats.
246 reviews on Wellness Living, most five-star. Clients who came for a 3-class intro in 2013 are still here. Their kids are here. Their parents are here. We run an annual Christmas fundraiser that the local magazines have written about.
The Marilyn Monroe building is even more photographed than it was in 2011. The studio is still on the ground floor. Alana still teaches most weeks.
"The little studio that could." That's what we call it. Still.
BY THE NUMBERS
Fifteen years, counted.
2011
Founded October
6
Certified teachers
8
Class formats
246+
Client reviews
AN INVITATION
Come see the studio
the Rockette built.
Three private sessions for $60. Walk into a studio that has been here, doing this, for fifteen years. You'll know within one class.