The transformation of pole dancing — myth or reality?

I was at a production of ‘The Vagina Monologues’ when I saw my first belly-dancing. Eve Ensler’s mainstream feminist hit was being bolstered by a number of local acts with a connection to the cause. “Why bellydancing?” I asked my neighbour. “Don’t you know?” came the reply, “Belly-dancing is being reclaimed as a feminist art form. It was originally performed by women to entertain other women in segregated parties. It celebrates the power of womanhood!” Really? Interesting. But as I watched the soloist batting her come-hither eyes behind her diaphanous veil, then turning her back on the audience so we could better appreciate the jiggles of her wide birthing hips, I thought, “No. I don’t buy it.”

Some things are so entrenched in popular consciousness as practices that demean and objectify women that no degree of revisionist history can erase the taint. So it was with some trepidation that I went to see my friend Canela teach her pole-dancing class at the recent open day of Dancespace Ampang. Before we get into it, I’d like to say that Canela is about as strong and self-aware an example of womanhood as you are ever likely to find. She was top of the class when we were friends at school. She went on to trade ballet for ice hockey, and is now an analyst at a think tank, when she is not learning Spanish, practicing Arabic calligraphy, or attacking with a sword in wushu. So, what’s a girl like her doing in a place like this?

Pole dancing has become the latest craze for a certain segment of the professional female population. Its reputation for strengthening and toning the body are legendary. In an attempt at complete sanitization, gyms now bill it as ‘fit-pole’, the group workout that will have you hanging upside down using only the strength of your inner thighs in no time! The pole is being transformed into a workout accessory, as neutral as an exercise ball. Or is it? Although it is now the domain of privileged career women trying to combat the effects of overconsumption, can it ever be totally divorced from its origins as a means for underfed underprivileged sex workers to miserably make a little money?

In some ways pole has the leg up (excuse the pun) over bellydancing in this respect. There is nothing to necessarily tie pole dancing to a certain style of dance – no music, no costume, no prescribed movements, no sacred cultural traditions. There is only an accessory – the pole. Do with it what you will. And yet so much pole dancing, and Canela’s included, returns to the stereotypical movement vocabulary that my boyfriend describes uneuphemistically as ‘humping the pole’. But, Canela cautions, there are all types out there, from world champion and YouTube favourite KT Coates whose style is characterised as purely athletic, to others who go for a more ‘artistic’ approach. And, she says, there is also subtlety to consider – even if it is about sex, it can be done well or it can be done badly.

And there’s no doubt that Canela does it well. Watching her perform the routine she choreographed for her Advanced Beginners pole class at Dancespace [see YouTube video below] I was certainly impressed by her physical ability as she attacked all her tricks but also by her performance quality. She has nice lines and makes good clear shapes. She finishes all her movements and never appears to be straining. Despite the inherent suggestiveness of the piece (how could it not be, set to ‘Candy Shop’ by rapper 50 Cent?) Canela performed it with such calm confidence that I could not witness her enviable poise without thinking that here was a woman completely in control.

And after all what’s so wrong with it being about sex? Well, said my boyfriend, would you teach that to high-schoolers? No, of course not, but not, I hasten to add, because high-schoolers wouldn’t enjoy it. There is no creature in the world so excited about flaunting her own sexuality as a seventeen-year old girl. But I wouldn’t teach it to high-schoolers because that would of course invite backlash from parents and the community, and because I don’t want to be part of the cultural complex that pushes sexuality upon girls too early and too soon. But why isn’t it okay for consensual adults? In this dumbed-down world where grown-ups read Harry Potter and watch superhero comic movies without blinking, isn’t there space for more adult practices, in every sense of the word? Must everything be PG-13? Sure, pole dancing doesn’t require deep abstract thinking, but perhaps, like belly-dancing, it genuinely can become a method for grown women to come to grips with their own bodies and to explore their sexiness.

Sexiness, also, is always in the eye of the beholder, as well as the actor. For people who have spent a lot of time pole-dancing, like Canela, I think that initial impressions of sensuality wear off. They become immune to the suggestiveness of certain movements – to them they are just movements, to be learned and executed, well or badly. Canela demonstrated to me a move she included in her routine for the Clorets Amateur Pole Dancing Competition, posted to the Internet last year, in which she swings both legs together high up the pole, then bends her legs to wrap the backs of her knees around the pole as she slides down. My response: “To me, that looks sexy.” She’s surprised. She is so close to this practice that she can no longer see with the eyes of a non-initiate. So possibly the ubiquitous pole-humping move – whether facing the pole, knees spreadeagled around it, or with the back to the pole, writhing up and down – which speaks to me so clearly of strip clubs, is now in Canela’s mind and the minds of other dedicated pole dancers merely a point-scoring exercise, just like those ridiculous extraneous arm motions you see Olympic gymnasts pull out in their beam routines.

Then again, the pole dancers are not so distant from the general population as to imagine that their routines are always suitable for general consumption. There was some debate over my posting this recording to YouTube – how recognisable would the participants be? But we all have distinctions between private and public – this is why your Facebook page is for friends only. Some dancers will plaster themselves all over the Internet while performing at Sexpo. Others will be more circumspect. But given the inherent attractions of pole, I think it is here to stay. We must learn to make a wider space for it within our cultural consciousness.

In my five-minute lesson at DanceSpace, I experienced some of the things that make pole so seductive an activity, and I mean that in a non-sexual way. When you harness the centrifugal forces as you spin around the pole, and learn to climb it and control your descent, you experience a similar rush of blood to the head as you once did hanging upside down from the highest rung of the jungle gym as a child. This sensation is as far away, I think, as one is likely to get from the disempowered strip club dancers of yore. Perhaps, as Canela believes, pole really can be whatever you want it to be.

So, do you buy it?