Disco Barre at the Disco Barre studio: The new studio opened in 2019, and the signature disco barre class blends traditional barre movements — pliés, relevés and sautés — with contemporary dance moves designed to tone and strengthen your limbs, all to a fun playlist.

Sophie Ritchie, 41, set up a dance studio offering classes in Disco Barre and the Lotte Berk Technique. They help women feel fitter, more feminine and also beat menopause symptoms and improve their sex lives.

A Disco Barre class is the sexiest way to get that sculpted body you’ve always wanted.

Discobarre - Ballet + Barry White = our kind of exercise class.

In an exercise studio in a former Turkish supermarket in London's trendy Dalston, sat alongside a vegan beauty salon and sustainable menswear outlet, a cult workout favoured by a raft of famous older faces is being revived for the benefit of a new generation.

Sure, you’ve done barre: a thrust here, a leg lift there. It’s painful and it’s effective – but it’s not as authentic or multifaceted as the original barre workout. The good news is now you can experience the real thing.

Discobarre is East London’s newest barre studio in Dalston designed to make you feel empowered through breaking a sweat! Discobarre combines the discipline of ballet with strength training, isometric holds and circular movements for mobilisation. Do not be deceived by these small movements, your muscles will be crying by the end of the class! Founder Sophie Ritchie’s vision of Discobarre is to make women appreciate their own bodies by using all its femininity to feel sexy yet strong.

For a full-body workout and a core of steel, book into Discobarre Studio for one of their sculpting barre classes. A 60-minute session incorporates sweat-breaking ballet exercises set to a seriously fun playlist that may even distract you from just how hard you’re working. Your bum, thighs and arms will reap the benefits fast. And don’t worry – the moves have been designed to be easy and enjoyable, so you don’t have to be a seasoned ballet pro.

This hour-long class will see your body shake and move muscles you didn’t know you had. What starts as stretching to house music becomes a bar- and mat-based workout so all-consuming that novices can forget to notice the great tunes. The class draws on traditional balletic “barre” movements — pliés, relevés and sautés — and contemporary dance moves, strengthening your legs and glutes. Many positions look and feel tiny to start with but ensure you quickly feel the burn.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a novelty class. There is nothing novel about Sophie Ritchie’s signature barre class which leaves your thighs shaking and your head nodding to some of the best music outside Studio 54. The disco ball-lit studio and beautiful surroundings of this boutique Hackney gym are almost enough to forget your trembling quads. Almost.

“The floor work including, including choreographed versions of oblique twists and buttock clenches, ignites your core. When I leave the class I’m walking taller, with that disco spirit in my soul…”

“This basement fitness studio is one of the coolest places to break a sweat in east London. They run a number fo great barre classes. Try Disco barre, ballet-inspired moves to ace tunes, or to really strengthen specific areas give Ballet Rebels: Buns and Guns or Box and Burn a go. Our fave is Pilates, Barre and Flow, an elegant and bum-shakingly good class full of fun moves that might just distract you from how hard you’re working.”