This is a question a lot of beginning students ask me. And the answer is now over a decade! But it all started back in in a studio that was having its first open house, Studio Venus. This studio started as a home read: garage studio with two poles, no mirrors, and dim, red lighting. I was in awe of and in love with the space from day one, and it gave me an outlet to enjoy amazing movement for the sake of movement with zero expectations in the midst of getting a dance degree. So much of my pole journey in learning new tricks happened at The Jukebox when the of us would stay and figure out new tricks after performing all night. After finding no pole outlets for me, I was convinced to teach some classes out of my living room. There, inMuse Pole Fitness was born.
Pole dancing in a safe space can enhance our experience as dancers beyond the fitness, performance, self-confidence results that are usually linked with taking up pole. As an art and a sport created by strippers, pole dancing features a lot of nudity. A Sociological Review article by David W. Their critics charge that they are at odds with the university as a site of debate; that their use has a chilling effect on free speech; and even that safe spaces are harmful to liberal democratic society itself. Andrew Simon highlights the diversity aspect of safe spaces, arguing that even unintentionally, societal power imbalances may perpetuate unequal distributions of representation, requiring the creation of safe spaces to flip the script. Safety is, however, relative: different levels or types of safety may be required in spaces, depending on the age, religion, gender identity, race, size, culture, class or disability of those that are part of it. So how can we apply the diversity of human needs and experience to the concept of safe space, and this concept to the pole studio?
Learning new things and sharing knowledge is the best part of being human. I make sure to regularly attend classes wherever I am. It keeps the mind fresh. I was always very interested and impressed with all the things we were learning in class. I would laugh in awe of the trick the instructor was demonstrating, sometimes shaking my head in disbelief over their confidence that I could also do it.
It can be scary, daunting? The simple answer is to try them all but, that can be expensive, time consuming, and not always desirable. It can be hard to get permission to post photos and videos of students so finding diversity in teachers is often a good indicator of overall studio diversity. If you ask, are you told your options or is it hidden? Is the studio designed for drop in classes or are they semester based? How are levels defined? And how do you move between levels?