Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

• Login
• Join

Search this site:

After infiltrating an event at the pole dance school, I decided that the only way to really understand the phenomenon was to engage in it. I have studied various dance forms my entire life and have performed professionally as well.  Over the last 5 years I have dedicated myself mostly to Middle Eastern belly dance. Belly dance is another form of dance that women have reported feeling self-esteem, body image and sensuality benefits from - I figured if I could shimmy on my toes and writhe on by back in a dance studio and on stage I could handle a pole dance class.

I signed up for an intro class. The intro class is basically an orientation that includes a full class. Since I have had a lot of experiences taking dance classes I figured the whole thing would be very familiar territory only with different movements. I was wrong.

The dance studio itself was unlike any I had ever been in. The walls were painted a deep purple and the shades were drawn. The extremely low light was provided by small Moroccan looking lamps in the corner and candles lining two of the walls of the studio. Four poles stood in the middle of the room and there I sat in the dimly lit room, on a yoga mat with 11 other women doing the same. Our instructor was a powerfully built woman with a voice to match. She had an apprentice with her who made sure every one found a place to sit in the circle that was formed at the beginning of class. This was the point when the instructor asked us all to go around the room and introduce ourselves and share why we had decided to come to the class that day. I came up with some line about reading all about it and just being curious - which I guess was not entirely untrue now that I think about it! The other women cited reasons such as "wanting to feel more comfortable with my body" to "Blowing off some steam after a hard day" to "My friend made me come here". Everyone was dressed in yoga/workout clothes, not a stripper heel in sight. After a few minutes of an introductory chitchat we were all prone on our yoga mats ready for action.

The series of movements on the ground could only be described as a cross between a Pilates class, a yoga class, and an extremely modified Dodson-esque body sex class (sans release!). Any traditional yoga posture was imbued with hair swinging and undulating. We were instructed to feel the shape of our bodies in movement and appreciate the terrain of our curves. It was unlike anything I had ever, ever experienced in a dance class. It's true that many physical practices call for you to pay attention to the state of your body (i.e. yoga, Pilates) but the experience of touching my own body while engaging that awareness was truly one of the wildest things I had experienced. It was body salience at it's purest! Although I have always felt very comfortable with my body this was very new territory for me! Why aren't we taught to appreciate our bodies in this way? To feel our bodies in a tactile way without the painful self-scrutiny which we have been trained to appraise it with. The instructor began to make some semi hokey allusions to an erotic creature that we all had inside of us. She also had a strange practice of referring to this creature (which is allegedly inside us) as "her" and "she" as if she was not really a part of our selves. I tried to ignore this strange compartmentalization of self and erotic creature as I continued to do my cat-cow, wildcat crawl floor exercises.

After rolling around on the ground for a while we eventually got on our feet and began to learn dances against the wall and, of course, on the pole. I began to watch all the women in the room and noticed all the "wanting to feel more comfortable with my body" women seemed to be the ones really, really getting into the movement against the wall and on the pole. "Blowing off some steam after a hard day" to "My friend made me come here" were seriously dropping it as well. Hair was being whipped around, backs were arched, legs extending and there were a lot of hot and bothered ladies turned on by their own erotic potential.

I was left climbing the pole and thinking about the erotic creature, why couldn't we be the erotic creatures? Why did we have to treat this creature as if she was a separate entity? Why was I starting to think of her as a "she"? I was confused. We seemed to be at once taught to engage with our bodies and sensuality yet at the same time had to project this new found awareness on a separate "creature". Sounded a bit like a familiar message...