I found this written in a card to Leslie from one of her Pilates students:

Leslie,

You helped me to change my thinking about my body. I will forever be grateful to you. You are a fantastic teacher. I will - no have missed you. _____* is good. I'm sure we will adjust...but she isn't you. 

Miss you,

**

(*) (**)Name of new teacher and student are omitted for legal purpose. ;-)

Leslie was an amazing dancer. It is hard to describe her movement, the way each part of her body could respond to, and become an expression of, sound when she was dancing. I grew up watching her dance. There were recitals and competitions throughout elementary school and high school, but I'd like to write a little about when Leslie went away to college and studied modern dance. 

I was used to seeing my sister perform tap to "Soul Man" and lyrical dance to the Beatles "Hey, Jude" but these routines could not prepare me for seeing her modern dance recitals at ISU and later at the University of Illinois. Freed from any pretenses of logic, to me, these performances were the most pure expression of unbridled imagination I had ever witnessed. When I watched her perform in this new mode, with beauty and simultaneously challenging notions of beauty, with rhythm and simultaneously challenging notions of what it means to be rhythmical, I was inspired. 

I was in high school when these performances opened a new world of possibility for me. Of course, I did not know this then, but seeing her embody experiment and creativity, watching her move from more traditional dance into the avant garde, gave me a living, moving example of courage.