Dear Pole Dancers - Re: Mallakhamb

I'm sure most pole dancers have seen this video by now. It's been passed round Facebook like made and made newspaper sites.


I love it. I'd kill to be that flexible, strong co-ordinated and have such lightning-fast transitions. Some of those drops make me want to jump on a pole and try them. What I don't love about the video is some of the commentary I've seen accompanying it (and I've seen quite a few instansiations of this comment):

'This is proof that pole dancing doesn't come from strip clubs!'

Which, is utter bullshit. The type of pole dancing that you, a woman/man in the Western world practice has come out of strip clubs. Most of the moves we do were invented/discovered by strippers. Yes, lots of the moves are similar, but there's only so many things that a human body can do. Yes, there is now a degree of exchange in moves (especially between pole dance and chinese pole - I know because I've been shown moves my a chinese pole performer and vice-versa).

That still doesn't mean that the influence on the pole dance you do isn't primarily from exotic dancers. How to test that? Name me the top Mallakhamb players. I've been doing pole for about 2 and half years, I can't name one. Name me top pole dancers who are current or former exotic dancers? We could be here for a while.

Rant over.

7 Month Stretching Progress

I've been posing this everywhere, so why not here?

I've been recording my stretching progress in photo form since early January (thanks to PoleJunkies). It's great as I get to see how much I've improved and things I need to work on. I've been planning to compile the photos and present them. Mostly they're stuck in a massive album on facebook.

So this is my starting flexibility compared with where I am now.



I am ridiculously pleased with a lot of this. My front splits are almost there, my box splits are actually improving (I didn't think they would) and I'm loving my backbends!

I've been stretching lots over the last two months as I've not been fit to pole or much else really. I had a monster 'flu (over 3 weeks of pain and fever) in June and then in July I had two separate impacted wisdom tooth extractions, which I'm only just healing from now. In that time I managed to make quite a bit of progress. I just need to keep it up :D