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

- 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 enough, propelled by Black Swan's hurricane of publicity, plus a big lift from Flicker and her well-connected friends, Ballet Beautiful would become the kind of insider secret traded at Caviar Kaspia during Paris Fashion Week. Both in person and online, Bowers would be the body sculptor of choice to a handful of A-list actresses and performers and a host of Victoria's Secret Angels.

With her mane of long brown hair and ramrod-straight posture, Bowers oozed ballerina: graceful, girlish, disciplined, slightly prim-always smiling through her grueling workouts. "I mean, really, she's kind of flawless," says writer and brand consultant Ray Siegel. "I would have a hard time coming up with a single negative thing to say about her."