By HTE founder, Erin Hughes.
The music is loud. A DJ is playing. Bodies move together, following the same rhythm. There’s an energy in the room you might expect from a night out rather than a Pilates class.
And that is exactly the point.
Burn & Beats is Pilates, just not quite as you know it.
For founder Elissa Holloway, the idea was never simply to turn up the volume on a workout. She wanted to create an experience that combined movement and music, brought people together and gave them permission to forget everything else for an hour and simply have fun.
“I wanted people to actually feel something while they moved, not just switch off and go through the motions,” Elissa says.
“I wanted people to feel alive in their lives, even if it’s just for a little while.”
It’s a simple idea with a much more personal story behind it.
Finding the spark
Burn & Beats began during a period when Elissa was trying to find her own way forward.
At 51, she was in the depths of a difficult breakup, questioning who she was and what she wanted the next part of her life to look and feel like.
Pilates became a place where she could begin to heal.
“It became the place I started to pull myself back together, heal and begin to trust myself again.”
One instructor in particular, Sara, made an impression. Her classes were motivating, inclusive and quickly became a highlight of Elissa’s week.
But there was something else about those classes that stayed with her.
“I just loved the feeling of a group moving to the same beat,” she says. “It sounds silly, but I felt part of something, and I wanted other people to feel that too.”
She loved the classes. She just wanted them to run longer.
And she wanted the music louder.
Much louder.
Turning up the volume
The idea crystallised during a phone call with an old friend who knew Elissa from her marketing days.
He asked what she was working on and made an observation: “You’ve always got something going on.”
Except, Elissa realised, she didn’t.
“It hit me hard that I hadn’t had a creative outlet in years. I knew straight away I wanted to create Burn & Beats.”
In many ways, the ingredients had been there all along.
Music had always been part of Elissa’s life. She remembers sneaking out to nightclubs at 15, and years spent working in events meant she understood how to create an experience and bring people together.
Her idea was to take the collective energy of a night out and combine it with Pilates: a proper DJ, loud music, unexpected venues and a room full of people moving together.
“I just built what I wanted and hoped it landed for others.”
She asked Sara to build it with her.
“She instantly got the vision.”
Burn & Beats was born.
More than a workout
Elissa isn’t trying to replace traditional Pilates.
“A lot of Pilates is quiet by design, and there’s a place for that,” she says.
She simply wanted another way to experience it.
“I wanted something with energy to it, something that felt like a night out as much as a workout. I wanted a proper DJ, a room that felt awake rather than hushed.”
But beneath the music and atmosphere is something more important: how people feel when they walk into the room.
“You don’t have to be good or strong, just up for it.”
Elissa wants people to be able to arrive alone and still feel they belong. It reflects her own experience with Sara, who welcomed her into Pilates and ultimately became a close friend.
That sense of connection came alive at the first Burn & Beats event.
Elissa was nervous. She had put something entirely new into the world and had no idea how people would respond.
Tickets sold out in 48 hours.
Then, as the event unfolded, she experienced a feeling she remembered from dance floors years earlier. A room full of strangers somehow stopped feeling like strangers.
“When you’re sweating in a room and everyone’s moving to the same pulse, that separateness eases,” she says.
“That’s what community is to me, and it’s what I wanted Burn & Beats to be about. Just being in it together.”
The joy of letting go
Perhaps this is where Burn & Beats becomes about something bigger than exercise.
As a single mum with a full-time job, Elissa understands how difficult it can be to claim an hour that belongs entirely to you.
“As a mum, you understand what it costs to carve out time that belongs only to you.”
We talk a lot about self-care. We book the facial, the massage, the appointment in the diary. But Elissa wonders whether we sometimes overlook something much simpler.
Joy.
“I think sometimes we’re quietly neglecting something deeper without even realising it. We haven’t experienced true joy in a while, and we’ve forgotten what it actually gives us back.”
Not everything has to achieve something.
Not every workout needs a goal.
Sometimes we should be able to do something simply because it feels good.
“Being a bit frivolous is underrated,” Elissa says.
“There doesn’t need to be an outcome from the class. No goal, no result to chase, just an hour of fun for its own sake.”
Then she says something that perhaps captures the mission of Burn & Beats better than anything else.
“When a woman walks through that door, I want her to know for the next hour nobody needs her for anything.”
For that hour, she isn’t managing somebody else’s day or solving the next problem.
“She’s just there, in her body, in the music, for herself.”
Building something that matters
Burn & Beats may be fun, but building it alongside a full-time job and single parenthood has involved plenty of less glamorous moments. Elissa jokes that her son is now well acquainted with packing goodie bags and directing traffic.
Yet this business feels different from others she has built.
“This is the first business I’ve built where the goal wasn’t just to make money, it was to scratch a creative itch.”
That makes Burn & Beats more personal, but it has also brought unexpected rewards.
“I’ve experienced more kindness and generosity from strangers through Burn & Beats than I have in a long time. It really does seem to have a genuine energy about it.”
There are now plans to take Burn & Beats beyond the Bellarine into the Surf Coast and Geelong, with the longer-term dream of expanding nationally.
Bigger venues and bigger nights may be ahead, but Elissa doesn’t measure the significance of Burn & Beats by how large it becomes.
Ask what would need to happen for her to believe it had really mattered and her answer is immediate.
“Honestly, that’s already happened.”
Creating it required her to trust herself again.
“Trusting myself and believing in myself again was the first win, before a single ticket ever sold.”
Everything since has added another layer.
If someone arrives carrying a difficult day and walks out lighter, that matters.
If someone comes alone and leaves feeling part of something, that matters.
And perhaps that is why something called “Pilates, But Loud” can have such a simple idea at its heart.
We all need places where we can put down the responsibilities of everyday life. Where movement doesn’t need to be about achievement, and where, for one hour, nobody needs anything from you.
You can just move.
Connect.
Let go.
And come back to yourself.
Ready to Feel the Burn & the Beat?
Experience the movement, music and connection for yourself. Tickets to the next Burn & Beats event are on sale now. Discover upcoming events, secure your spot, and see what’s coming next at Burn & Beats.
