Pole position3/26/2023 Best of all, I finally access the entire landscape of my abs, from rib cage to well below navel, an unexpected perk. Dozens of deep-seated squats set my quads on fire. ![]() Aerial pole work requires using your skin like double-stick tape, so the room is a sea of flesh: hard biceps, shimmering cellulite, a C-section scar. My years of rigid ballet training begin to loosen in my hips, along with the attendant self-judgment. (I’m hooked on a once-a-week rhythm, though the $40 sessions often book up in advance.) That night, protesters are gathering downtown and across the country to decry the draconian antiabortion legislation rolling out state by state, and freedom takes on a new corporeality in the studio. I think about the idea of owning your body, your sexuality, your well-being, as I head to my third pole class in as many weeks. Nearly 15 years later, there’s a different kind of anxiety in the air. ![]() The attention certainly bodes well for the coming season’s runway shows, but what keeps Redding in class is the creative outlet and the “sisterhood,” she says. Progress has been swift, as evidenced by her Instagram, where she has fielded inquiries from photographers, designers, and casting agents-especially women-who are intrigued by her new hobby. Rose Redding, a 21-year-old London-based model, has found herself reinvigorated since starting pole in January. The brute strength required to maneuver the body around a stable apparatus energizes the fascial system that connects muscle to muscle, continues Austin, who notes that wringing out the obliques in this way also makes for good cross-training, whether you’re cycling, running-or catwalking. Austin, PPDPT, the Minneapolis-based physical therapist behind the city’s Performance Art Athletics, which leads injury-prevention workshops geared toward dancers and musicians. “With pole, you’re moving in three dimensions,” says Misty R. That goal is now closer to reality: In 2017, the Global Association of International Sports Federations granted “observer status” to pole’s worldwide governing body-a step on the path to official sport recognition. Gymnasts hurl themselves around horizontal bars why not a vertical one? “Our Future Is Olympic,” reads the optimistic tagline for the US Pole Sports Federation, which cohosted its fifth national championships in Las Vegas last month. Such raw athleticism is exactly why there’s a growing push to categorize pole skills as a sport. The British musician embodied an exquisite contradiction: tensile strength and sylphlike ethereality. Soon after, viral footage of FKA Twigs-unfurling herself high in the air during a pole sequence for her Magdalene concert tour-flooded the internet. Scouted via Instagram, the Providence-based pole artist Neyon brought her languid spirals to Solange’s 33-minute video for When I Get Home, the album she dropped this March. The movement technique-mesmerizing for the way it absorbs disparate dance styles, from lyrical jazz to aerial tricks-has rocked the cultural consciousness of late. After years spent in prim posture at the barre, pole dancing promises to be a reorientation by 90 degrees, not to mention a serious full-body workout. It is a godly hour on a humid Sunday morning, and the eight of us, all women, have our reasons for seeking out the intro-level class: in my case, to escape a ho-hum yoga rut and to get out of my head-and into some slow-rippling body rolls. “This is your lat,” he says in a safety-first tone, patting the shoulder-stabilizing muscle that hugs the rib cage. ![]() ![]() Slim-hipped and barefoot, dressed in a summer-weight tank top and black briefs, the up-tempo instructor stretches his right arm up to grasp a floor-to-ceiling steel rod. In the dimly lit basement of Body & Pole, a sprawling three-level fitness studio in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, Sam Doblick is addressing a room of pole-dancing hopefuls.
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