The practice deserved a studio worthy of it.
The Pilates Society AZ was built around a single idea: that the work deserves a place worthy of it.
A return to the intentional, considered space Pilates was always meant to be — where instructors have the depth to honor the foundation and the range to play within it.
Classical principles.
Contemporary fusion.
Instructors who are valued.
A community that shows up for the work, and for each other.
More than a studio. A society.
A society implies devotion to something shared. For us, that’s the work itself — and the people who show up for it. Membership is not a transaction. It is a quiet commitment to a particular kind of practice and a particular standard of instruction. Members find their practice here. Often, they find their people in the same room. To enter is to belong.
The standard, not the style.
Our work is grounded in classical Pilates principles — intentional sequencing, fluid transitions, precise cueing, and progressions that meet members where they are. From that foundation, the schedule opens up to include contemporary fusion, TRX, jumpboard, and recovery.
What stays consistent across every class is the standard. We don’t adapt the method into something easier. We adapt the teaching to meet the body in front of us. The entry point varies. The integrity doesn’t.
The studio is, above all, its instructors.
Our most experienced instructors bring deep training and years of experience to the work. They set the standard for the studio, mentor the team, and protect the integrity of the method as we grow. Every instructor on our schedule works under this shared standard: intentional sequencing, precise cueing, considered transitions, thoughtful progressions. The depth varies across the team. The commitment doesn’t.
Kelly Baker
Co-Founder
Kelly Baker has been living and breathing Pilates for 25 years — long before it was a trend, and long before she knew it would become her life’s work.
It started at 22, with a Mari Winsor DVD ordered off a late-night infomercial. She memorized the entire set. That obsession led her to her first private classical reformer studio in 2007, to weekly sessions, to a reformer of her own, and eventually to becoming a founding member at one of the first group reformer studios in the East Valley — where she found the one thing she wasn’t expecting: a real community.
What she couldn’t accept was watching a corporation undervalue the instructors who carried the method — and slowly dilute the principles that had changed her life. So she decided to build something better.
Richard Suttle
Co-Founder & Lead Instructor
Richard Suttle spent over a decade as a professional ballroom dancer — and paid the price his body demanded in return. Years of repetitive stress left him with hip instability, pelvic imbalances, and plantar fasciitis that changed the way he moved and ultimately the way he stood. When his dancing career ended, he needed to rebuild from the ground up.
Pilates gave him a way back.
Introduced to the method in 2014 by a former dance student, Rick recognized immediately what he had been missing — a system built on body awareness, intentional movement, and the kind of deep control that no amount of training had taught him.
Within a year he was pursuing certification, studying classical Pilates through Pureformance Pilates under Wendi Cunningham and her mentor Chris Robinson, and earning his PMA 500-hour certification through the Pilates Method Alliance.
Join the Society
Whether you're new to Pilates or returning to a long-standing practice, we'd be glad to welcome you.