Get hot at pole dancing class
Beware, this is serious exercise people
Apparently, Imperial is one of the few universities in the country not to already have a pole dancing society (I wonder why…). Even Cambridge University is better catered for! Given the growing interest in all forms of erotic dancing – the much hyped Burlesque the movie has recently been released – and the shift in emphasis from XXX to exercise, it seemed a good time to find out whether we should think about starting one…
Having rounded up a substantial proportion of the female students in fourth year Physics (and Chem Eng) we decided on a pre-Valentine’s taster session at the shiny Riverside Studios in Hammersmith run by the Pole Dancing School
A word of warning: the School insists on short shorts, bare legs and high heels, even for the taster class. This is not for the faint-hearted in the middle of British winter! Fortunately we were all girls together with legs of varying shades of pasty – thank god, since I had come down with a heavy cold and couldn’t have looked less sexy if I’d tried.
Our instructor was the actual founder of the whole school and Miss Pole Dance World 2005! Elena is classically trained as a ballet dancer and it showed in her gorgeous figure and total poise. She took up pole dancing as part of her rehabilitation following a serious car accident and says she immediately loved it. Watching her demonstrate some of the amazing gymnastics she could do on a pole made me wish it was easier to watch this kind of performance outside of a strip club. A quick search online didn’t turn up many pole dance venues, but there is a good range of burlesque shows in London.
Our session started with Kondi-style warm up exercises and very quickly progressed onto having a go with the poles themselves. We learnt Fireman Spin (leap on and twizzle round and round), Pole Slide, Swan Slide (sliding with your legs kicked out behind) and Sitting Hold (just sitting knees-bent half-way up the pole a bit like a pole dancing genie), mastering them with extremely varying degrees of success! The main problems were sweaty hands sliding off the pole which led to knees hitting the floor at speed, and in extremely grippy thighs, which didn’t allow for any spinning!
Towards the end of the class we even managed to put it all together in a routine set to music that involved lots of sexy walking around the pole and standing ‘seductively’, hand on hip. This was maybe my favourite part since Elena had excellent tips on posture and style, which are actually valuable far beyond the world of pole dancing.
But they are not kidding about the fitness aspect! Days later my thighs are still aching and it is hard to raise my arms above my head. The most important requirement seems to be upper body strength and couldn’t help wondering if pole dancing might actually be more suited to men, although the visual impact of all the pretty twizzling would be somewhat lost.
We had a really fabulous, funny girls’ night out and despite the many bruises we’re all very happy to have given it a go. Maybe soon there will be poles set-up in the UDH for an evening, but otherwise Pole Dancing School runs tasters and beginners courses all over London, as do several other dance schools which can be found easily online. At £15 for an hour it’s a pretty costly exercise class, but at least half of us would seriously consider getting lessons in the future – we’ll just have to wait for a good deal on Groupon!
Courses can be booked from beginner to 'addict' level:
