304 SEPTEMBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
Vertical
Integration
These top pole
studios break
down the basics,
and much more.
BODY & POLE
115 W. 27th St., New
York, NY 10001;
(212) 334-6900
bodyandpole.com
THE
CHOREOGRAPHY
HOUSE
13131 Sherman
Way, #205,
North Hollywood,
CA 91605;
(818) 854-0922
thechoreography
house.com
INCREDIPOLE
145 Java St.,
#2R, Brooklyn,
NY 11222;
(646) 396-3699
incredipole.com
MILAN POLE
DANCE STUDIO
250 NW 23rd St.,
#408, Miami,
FL 33127;
(305) 420-6831
milanpole
dance.com
SHINE
ALTERNATIVE
FITNESS
6415 S Tenaya
Way, Suite 100, Las
Vegas, NV 89113;
(702) 685-1864
shinealternative
fitness.com
KNOCKOUT
BODIES
2216 Central Ave
NE, Minneapolis,
MN 55418;
(612) 789-0826
knockout
bodies.com
I think about the idea of owning your
body, your sexuality, your well-being,
as I head to my third pole class in as many
weeks. My years of rigid ballet training
begin to loosen in my hips, along with the
attendant self-judgment
VLIFE
to categorize pole skills as a sport. Gymnasts
hurl themselves around horizontal bars; why not
a vertical one? “Our Future Is Olympic,” reads
the optimistic tagline for the US Pole Sports
Federation, which cohosted its fifth national
championships in Las Vegas last month. That
goal is now closer to reality: In 2017, the Global
Association of International Sports Federations
granted “observer status” to pole’s worldwide
governing body—a step on the path to official
sport recognition. “With pole, you’re moving in
three dimensions,” says Misty R. Austin, PPDPT,
the Minneapolis-based physical therapist behind
the city’s Performance Art Athletics, which leads
injury-prevention workshops geared toward
dancers and musicians. The brute strength required
to maneuver the body around a stable apparatus
energizes the fascial system that connects muscle to
muscle, continues Austin, who notes that wringing
out the obliques in this way also makes for good
cross-training, whether you’re cycling, running—or
catwalking. Rose Redding, a 21-year-old London-
based model, has found herself reinvigorated
since starting pole in January. Progress has been
swift, as evidenced by her Instagram, where she has
fielded inquiries from photographers, designers,
and casting agents—especially women—who
are intrigued by her new hobby. The attention
certainly bodes well for the coming season’s
runway shows, but what keeps Redding in class is
the creative outlet and the “sisterhood,” she says.
“Pole is very good for the mind.”
“It definitely is not just a dance, no way,” agrees
Kelly Yvonne, a classically trained dancer turned
pole choreographer, who has shepherded Twigs’s
training regimen. At her Los Angeles pole studio
The Choreography House (which will launch
online courses later this year), she’s seen mental
transformations, like Twigs’s, in tandem with
physical ones. But for some, pole as a means of
personal evolution doesn’t change its polarizing
place of origin: the strip club.
The backlash against pole’s rise as a fitness
modality began as early as 2004, when the national
gym chain Crunch, sensing a bubbling trend, added
classes to its roster. As new acolytes took notice,
so did critics. “Why is this the ‘new feminism’ and
not what it looks like: the old objectification?”
Ariel Levy asked in her 2005 book Female
Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch
Culture, which probed the mainstreaming of hot
pants, breast implants, and, yes, pole dancing—
something Levy and plenty of others deemed “a
desperate stab at freewheeling eroticism in a time
and place characterized by intense anxiety.”
Nearly 15 years later, there’s a different kind of
anxiety in the air. I think about the idea of owning
your body, your sexuality, your well-being, as I
head to my third pole class in as many weeks. (I’m
hooked on a once-a-week rhythm, though the $40
sessions often book up in advance.) That night,
protesters are gathering downtown and across
the country to decry the draconian antiabortion
legislation rolling out state by state, and freedom
takes on a new corporeality in the studio. My years
of rigid ballet training begin to loosen in my hips,
along with the attendant self-judgment. Aerial pole
work requires using your skin like double-stick
tape, so the room is a sea of flesh: hard biceps,
shimmering cellulite, a C-section scar. Dozens of
deep-seated squats set my quads on fire. Best of all,
I finally access the entire landscape of my abs, from
rib cage to well below navel, an unexpected perk.
“I have a lot of respect for people who do
the pole,” Jennifer Lopez told Jimmy Kimmel
while promoting this month’s Hustlers, set in a
Manhattan strip club, with an ensemble cast that
includes Constance Wu and Cardi B. Veteran
Cirque du Soleil performer Johanna Sapakie
trained Lopez (officially ageless at 50) for the role,
helping her find a second-nature ease on the pole.
But it was Jacqueline Frances, better known as Jacq
the Stripper, who helped Lopez figure out how to
harness the energy of a room. A comedian, author,
and seasoned dancer, the statuesque Frances was
something of an authenticity coach on the film’s
set, ensuring that Lopez’s and Wu’s performances
are as true-to-life as possible. She also makes a
cameo as a happy-go-lucky stripper, “which is
not a far cry from how I appear on the daily,” she
jokes. Frances accedes that the lineage of pole
dancing is inherently murky, as it has always lived
in the shadows. “But we can’t be talking about pole
fitness and empowerment if we’re not honoring
the foremothers who invented it,” she says, in a
convincing bid to have me meet her at Pumps—a
low-key strip club in East Williamsburg that’s
more a bar than one of those “oppressive hetero
spaces,” she says. When I arrive, Jacq’s friend
Sunny—a beguiling aerialist from Spain, with a
face out of a Man Ray photograph—is on the pole,
suspending herself in lithe geometries. If this is the
freewheeling eroticism that Levy derided, here it is
grounded in enviable skill and, above all, agency. As
I slip into a taxi on the far side of midnight, I add
myself to the waitlist for another Sunday class. @
