The study of the elusive mass distribution of the early-type galaxies and its evolution with redshift is crucial in understanding the formation and subsequent history of these systems. Gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics are the two main diagnostic tools for the analysis of distant (z > 0.1) ellipticals; both, however, suffer from severe degeneracies and limitations when considered indipendently. We have developed a novel method which combines gravitational lensing and stellar dynamics in a fully self-consistent way, allowing to break some of these degeneracies and therefore to dissect distant ellipticals in unprecedented detail. We have applied the joint analysis to the early-type lens galaxy SDSS J2321-097 at redshift ~ 0.1, for which both VLT integral-field spectroscopy and HST imaging observations are available. This case study will pave the way for the analysis of the full SLACS sample of 17 E/S0 lens galaxies for which similar datasets are at hand.