Tipping POINT

When the PROGRESSIVE A-LIST CLIENTELE of the fashionable workout BALLET BEAUTIFUL learned that its FOUNDER was MARRIED to an ARCHITECT of the MAGA BLUEPRINT to impose an ultraconservative social agenda, PROJECT 2025, many felt SHOCKED and even BETRAYED

Story by MAGGIE BULLOCK

Sarah Sophie Flicker still remembers the burn. In 2009, the artist and activist was introduced through a friend to Mary Helen Bowers, a former New York City Ballet dancer who was working around the clock to train Natalie Portman to be a credible-looking ballerina for Black Swan. Bowers had a new workout business in mind—she called it Ballet Beautiful—and was looking for clients. Flicker, then Paper-magazine-famous for flying through the air in Weimar-era lingerie as a star of the Citizens Band, the politically fueled cabaret troupe she’d cofounded, was a prime candidate. By the end of that first session in her own Canal Street loft, Flicker was sold. “I was like, this bitch is slaying me,” she says now with a laugh. “I will give her this: The method worked.” Soon…

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Harper's Bazaar (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024

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