[Last modified: November, 17 2024 10:50 PM]
Standing in front of the pole, before warming up, my body feels stiff from sitting in class the whole morning, and still carries the cold from outside. Around me, a couple of other girls are also stretching before beginning their practice, all focused on their own flows. I am wearing baggy clothes – an oversized jumper that I never returned to its owner and flowy, wide-leg trousers – that gently press on my skin and welcome movement. The process of warming up before engaging in any physical activity, which so many people dread and would rather skip, is my favourite part. It feels like waking up after a long sleep, and it is the moment I reach out to connect with every muscle and joint in my body, including the ones I tend to neglect in other moments of the day. I get so lost in the process that sometimes it takes me a whole hour to wake up completely. I start from the neck and gradually come down to the ankles and feet through the shoulders, the torso, and the hips. When the warming up is done, clothes need to go. The cold is gone now, and it does not feel so traumatising to slip out of my jumper to start my training. In pole dancing, there is a very practical necessity to expose your bare skin. Otherwise, you will not grip the pole and sliding down can be dangerous, especially from a height. However, there is also an underlying to this practice, more subtle, connected to the stigma that many pole dancers routinely face, that is, erotism. As poet Joy Sullivan describes, for many women, pole dance is “the first space where you have the freedom to move erotically without hyper-vigilance […] it’s overwhelming to finally release the curve of your hips.” The pole studio is one of the safest places I have ever felt to expose my body. In a space where the cultural meanings generally associated with a female body cease to exist, one can finally focus on what their body feels like, not through the scrutinising eyes of society, but through the sensations of dancing. Movements (and even accessories, like high heels) that are socially attached to and performed by a certain gender loosen to welcome any type of body. It is one of the most powerful instances in which I experienced my body shifting from being an object too often subjected to the male gaze to a subject moving according to its own rules.