Coming Out of My Shell – April 2016

img_8199

I heard about a pole showcase called Something Wicked by Verticalove in Hamilton. They were looking for pole cleaners, or pole kittens, so I volunteered. I got to watch the performances, then went on stage and climbed the poles to clean them between performances. Dancers from across Ontario, including a few from my own studio SASS, and the States come to perform and they were all incredible!

I had a chance to feel what it was like to be onstage in heels and booty shorts. By the end of the second night, I met so many amazing new people and decided that I wanted to be a performer next time.

img_8197
img_6407

A few weeks later, I joined a few girls from SASS at the bar Southsides in Fort Erie promoting the studio. A girl set up her stage pole in the bar and we took turns doing tricks. I got really sick after Verticalove, so performing was very challenging but I toughed it out.

It was actually a bit of a dream come true. When I was in the beginners class, my instructor Shanyn told my class one night that she and her SASS girls were performing at a bar that night. That night, as I was learning basic spins, I dreamt of the day I would be good enough to do something like that. There I was, 2 years later living out something I thought only was a dream. That night I felt like my hard work was starting to pay off.

img_8198

Successes of 2015

image3

I ended 2015 with accomplishing a few goals I had set at the beginning of the year. I finally got cupid and was getting close to shoulder mounting. I learned how to do the extended butterfly pretty quickly. I started working on ballerina and jade.  Ballerina killed my ribcage for quite a while.  My splits for jade needed a lot of work.

I started working on doing more complex combo’s like the one in this picture from class. In order to come up with routines, I need to work on transitions between tricks to make it flow.

image5
image4

I had my first performance at an open house for SASS. It was for a small number of people but it was an opportunity to perform the routine I learned from the sexy flow class. A girl that attended loved my performance and it got her to sign up for the sexy flow class. It was amazing that I had inspired someone like that.

Joining SASS – Spring/Summer 2015

image1.JPGAs soon as I could, I got back on the pole. We got the ceiling reinforced for the pole so it wouldn’t fall again but I was still nervous at first. I had to face my fear of falling and gain my confidence back.

I returned to my weekly pole class for a month but decided I needed to train more. That’s when I decided to switch to SASS in Stoney Creek and bought a membership. I was intimated at first because the girls were so much stronger than me but I quickly felt part of the studio. All the girls are so friendly and helpful and it was easy to make friends since we had a common interest. I began taking a boot camp class and more open training classes. Just in a few months I was starting to see improvements.

image2.JPG

My First Year of Pole – 2014

I went to a beginners class once a week that was 1 hour for the first year. I remember how challenging it was just to learn how to climb the pole and invert.

image1a

After 6 months of doing pole, I did little photo shoot posing on my pole. I posted a few pictures on Facebook and used one as my profile picture. That was the moment that I publicly came “out” as a pole dancer and it was scary as I wasn’t sure what people would think. There is still a lot of stigma around pole so it is a difficult conversation to have sometimes as to what I do for a hobby and fitness.

By the end of the year I could climb, invert, do gemini and scorpio, superman and was working on cupid. I was doing preps for shoulder mounts but it felt like I was never going to be able to do it.

IMG_8180

We moved into a new house at the end of the year and turned one of the bedrooms into my own dance studio. I finally had a large room that I could practice in with enough space around the pole and large mirrors on the closet doors. My husband bought me a professional Platinum Stages brass pole for Christmas. I was all set to do some serious training.

image3a