The pair worked together over the course of two years—before the film even got an official go-ahead. They trained for at least two hours a day, five or six days a week, with Bowers creating a program that consisted of exercise moves she had used during her years of dancing, coupled with professional ballet training. “We really focused on getting her strong and fit, as well as teaching her to move and look like a true ballerina,” Bowers says. “The transformation was amazing and the film did an incredible job of showing how hard the life of a ballet dancer is.”

Luckily, you don’t have to be a Hollywood star to reap the rewards of Bowers’ knowledge—you can simply log on to her website for Ballet Beautiful (balletbeautiful.com), a fitness method that provides techniques to build and maintain the beauty, strength and tone of a true ballerina’s form. Bowers created the routine for herself during her years as a professional ballerina. She says it helped her to stay strong, flexible, lean and, most important, injury-free during her decade-long career.

“I took my first dance class at 8, and by the time I was 12 I knew I wanted to be a professional dancer,” Bowers says. By the age of 15, she was attending the prestigious School of American Ballet in Manhattan on a full scholarship, and just one year later she was invited to join the New York City Ballet. For 10 years, she danced at Lincoln Center and on stages around the world. “When you’re a professional dancer, you really don’t have anything else going on,” Bowers says. “When you’re not performing, you’re training for hours. Your whole life is about ballet.”

So when she retired from performing, Bowers was ready for a break from the ballet world—and her workout routine. But she returned to it while planning her own wedding in 2007. “It really helped me get back into ‘ballerina’ form, not to mention it’s a great stress reliever—definitely something every bride needs,” she explains. “And I loved that I didn’t have to go to the gym. I could do it from the comfort of my own home and take as little as 15 minutes or an hour.”