Woods ready to school you in pole dancingDate: 11/2/2017 In a ballroom in mid-August at the Hilton Hotel in Stamford, CT, the initial impression is the event is like any other dance recital one might have attended.
People flow in and out of the room depending upon if the performer in question is a friend or relative. Dancers wait their turn to compete in their costumes by the stage. Down the hall there is group of performers who wait in a dressing area. Each performance is punctuated by dozens of smart phones or tablets aimed at the stage.
And yet, this is a competition that would elicit an uninformed response such as no other dance competition would: pole-dancing.
The event is a competition sponsored by Pole Sport Organization, a national group that has been in business five years and hosts competitions such as this one around the country. Amy Guion is the founder of the company and noted that out of her last 17 such events, 10 have been sell-outs.
Pole dancing is an underground avocation and one that comes with some serious misconceptions.
She is quick to speak about the obvious: pole dancing’s connection to exotic dancing. She noted strippers make their money from tips on stage, lap dances and VIP rooms and not from pole performances. Although many strippers do pole dance, it’s not a money earner for them. The event in Stamford did close with an erotic presentation – one that Guion warned in her program wasn’t the family friendly event the rest of the competition was, but the majority of the time was dedicated to something quite different.
The people who signed up to compete at these events, take classes from pole dancing studios, Guion explained and are professional women, generally between the ages of 25 and 39 who are college educated. They see pole dancing as a fusion of gymnastics, theater and dance. Because of the cost of the lessons, she added this is generally a middle class activity.
Speaking about the potential for individual expression pole dancing provides, Guion said, “It’s building on a blank canvas for someone to present their art.”
Spending just a half hour watching the contestants one can easily see how dancers do indeed view the medium as their blank canvas. One young woman comes out with a prop of a pizza box and dances to a rock song proclaiming, “You’re no good for me.” Her dance includes moves on the stage before going to the pole. She is agile and clearly has carefully choreographed her story.
The audience cheers loudly.
Some performances are just dances. One woman comes out in a mid-calf flowing white dress as one might see at a ballet recital. Her performance is clearly inspired by ballet. It’s lovely.
Another woman in a Lara Croft outfit demonstrates the power of her body with a riveting series of moves and poses on the pole that definitely defy gravity as well as the abilities of 95 percent of the human race.
It’s easy to see that performers in productions such as Cirque de Soleil use much of the same kind of skill as these pole dancers – only what they do would never be compared or linked with exotic dancing. Context is everything.
There are three judges in the front of the room and Guion explain they look at the contestants from both the artistry of what they presented as well as the range of difficulty of the moves.
When the contestants return to a place in the audience they are hugged by their fellow competitors. Guion speaks about the sense of community in the pole-dancing world and there is plenty of evidence of it.
“This community is tight because of the outside stigma,” Guion said. She recounted how she recently went to Egypt for a pole-dancing event and was warmly greeted by the women who practice the sport there.
“It was an amazing connection,” she said.
When I ask about lobbying to have it in competition such as the Olympics, Guion said she really doesn’t care.
“We’re here for the art,” she explained and expressed concern that coming up with a formal point system to judge a performance could take some of the spontaneity from it.
She is also concerned the spirit of community could be diminished if it was ever truly accepted into the mainstream of sport.
In October, the Switzerland-based Global Association of International Sports Federations granted observer status to the International Pole Sports Federation, a first step to bringing the sport to the Olympics.
One would think the sport would be a natural for television, but Guion has a two-word answer: music rights. She said each performer picks her own music, which would make licensing the music for broadcast expensive. Because of music rights, one seldom sees pole-dancing videos on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, she added.
One of the people watching intently in the audience is the owner of one pole dance school, Pole Control Studio, Holly Woods. Woods is there to cheer on four of her students who have signed up to compete.
Woods was well known at the competition as a pioneering, competitor, teacher and proponent in New England of the sport.
Coming to Springfield
Woods is moving her business from Hartford, CT, to Springfield in order to have a facility large enough to meet her current demand as well as grow in the future. Located at 78 Hillman St. between Dwight and Chestnut streets, the former industrial space is being transformed into a studio to teach what Woods described as the “aerial arts.”
It is big enough to accommodate the equipment used in the classes, she explained as well as to be a space for other uses.
She recently spoke to Reminder Publications about her passion – teaching the fitness aspects of aerial sports and pole dancing on different apparatus for “all students, all shapes and sizes.”
Woods said her introduction to the sport came from her entrance in the exotic entertainment industry, where she “instantly took to the pole and eventually into the trapeze.”
She said her interest led her to enter several competitions, where she started to meet other performance artists.
Eight years ago she founded her Pole Control Studio in Hartford, CT, where thousands of women have taken classes. She said that a handful of all of her students are adult entertainers and confirmed what Guion said: her students are generally professional women.
I met three of the four women who competed at the Stamford, CT, event and one was a paraprofessional, another was a deejay at a major radio station while a third was an environmental engineer.
“I find that about 75 percent of my students have zero background in any dance or really any form of aerobics fitness training. This is most likely their first time building coordination, building strength and building mental agility. Meanwhile they are becoming empowered through a central empowerment that only sensual dance and pole dance offers. There are so many styles of dance that really helps your body and mind be free, but there’s nothing like the pole. The pole is your dance partner that allows you to totally let go of every inhibition and lets yourself be free,” Woods said.
To counter negative impressions of the support, Woods explained she emphasized the fitness aspects of pole dancing. “It’s unfortunate so many people have a negative stigma towards anything that would be empowering … because what we do is the complete opposite. We highly emphasize the education.”
Woods added that she sits down with students to discuss their impressions of pole dancing and said many students, though drawn to the sport, don’t want people to know they do it.
“I find most of these negative connotations come from old school misogynistic mindsets where women are not supposed to act certain ways,” she said. Women should be able to “fully express themselves,” she added.
She noted singers Pink and Madonna have both performed the same kind of aerial arts her students perform but they are not criticized for it.
She will be appearing at the Western Massachusetts Women’s Expo at the Big E’s Better Living Center on Nov. 5 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to talk about her studio and the sport.
General classes are offered six days a week and are geared to the interests of the students from general fitness to competition.
Like any other sport, the students who elect to enter competition have rigorous training. Students train for six to two years to enter a competition, Woods explained.
She added the training not only builds needed flexibility but muscle strength as well. Different style classes build core strength and exercises to develop hand strengths.
First day of classes should be Dec. 1 and to learn more contact Woods through the Pole Control Studios Facebook page or www.polecontrolstudios.com.
Wood said, “I tell my students, ‘I’ll teach you to climb, you will fall, but once you do, you’ll learn to fly.’”
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