World-class art, meet sweaty aerobics.<\/p>\n
New York City\u2019s cavernous Metropolitan Museum of Art has been holding lively morning workout sessions this winter amid its prized masterpieces.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 45-minute \u201cMuseum Workout\u201d sends people in exercise attire chugging through 35 galleries, past paintings, sculptures, armor and other treasures, before the venerable Fifth Avenue institution opens to the public.<\/p>\n
On a recent morning, an overnight snowstorm didn\u2019t deter any of the 15 people who\u2019d signed up for the session.<\/p>\n
It started with a warmup: calf stretches in the museum\u2019s grand limestone entrance and an easy jog out to the Bee Gees\u2019 hit \u201cStayin\u2019 Alive.\u201d Then came the speedy trek through the galleries and up the preserved ornate staircase of the 19th century Chicago stock exchange.<\/p>\n
There were squats in front of John Singer Sargent\u2019s \u201cPortrait of Madame X,\u201d balancing on one leg before Henry VIII\u2019s rigid armor, a yoga pose before a bronze nude of the Roman hunting goddess Diana, and jumping jacks in-between, all to a soundtrack of disco and Motown hits.<\/p>\n
Why bother traveling to a Manhattan museum \u2014 some did, from Pennsylvania, Kentucky and even California \u2014 just to exercise?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis offers you amazing moments,\u201d said participant Oliver Ryan, who runs a New York corporate wellness company. \u201cWe did our first stretch, and there in the vast gallery was Perseus holding the head of Medusa. What hit me was this was the TV of ancient times, a frozen moment from a story everyone knew.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Met commissioned the innovative Monica Bill Barnes Dance Company for the project. It was choreographed by the two women leading the workout \u2014 Monica Bill Barnes herself and her dance partner, Anna Bass \u2014 along with Robert Saenz de Viteri, the company\u2019s creative producing director.<\/p>\n
Bass said the team worked \u201cobsessively\u201d calculating how to keep a safe distance from the artworks. That means no wild swinging of arms or legs, and exercising a minimum of 3 feet or so from any treasure.<\/p>\n
Leading scantily clad, pumped up bodies around the artworks \u201creally runs against the culture of being in a museum, being quiet and being still and walking slowly,\u201d said Barnes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the business of making strange things,\u201d she added with a wry smile, \u201cbringing dance where it doesn\u2019t belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
De Viteri helped guide the workout session in a vintage tuxedo and sneakers, holding a laptop attached to a speaker that channeled music and recorded narration by artist and author Maira Kalman, who selected the art and gallery route.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething very physical happens to me when I\u2019m in a museum. I get this rush of excitement, this kind of tingle of mad, passionate arousal,\u201d Kalman\u2019s recorded voice said as the group did side-stretches in front of a stern-looking bust of American founding father Benjamin Franklin.<\/p>\n
The workout ends with everyone lying on their back, eyes closed, on the floor of the Met\u2019s luminous American wing. This yoga pose, called savasana, is meant to release tension from mind and body while absorbing the benefits of the dynamic exercises. Rising over the human stillness is Augustus Saint-Gaudens\u2019 ancient goddess \u2014 the resplendent, gilded Diana, about to release her arrow.<\/p>\n
The first sessions, from Jan. 19 through Feb. 12, were sold out months ago. The interest was so intense that more were added, through March 9, and they\u2019re also sold out. Participants, both men and women, have ranged in age from 13 to 85.<\/p>\n
Museum officials say there are no immediate plans for a future staging of what is essentially a \u201cperformance piece\u201d that took three years to create, with each participant movement matching music and visuals moment by moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Museum Workout\u201d was commissioned by the museum\u2019s MetLiveArts performance series and partly funded by the Jerome Robbins Foundation and One World Fund.\u2014AP<\/p>\n
Image: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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