My relationship with how I perform pole dance has been changing in parallel with my relationship with social media platforms as a scholar, activist, content creator and performer. I’ve been reflecting on it for quite a while, and now that I’ve (I think) concluded my performances for the season, I wanted to share those musings in a more coherent format here.
Performing at pole competitions vs performing at cabaret / nightlife
Two years ago I made the conscious decision to take a step back from pole dance competitions, the main space where I performed throughout my pole career. I wanted to detach something I loved – performing from an audience – from things that stressed me out – pouring my heart into a performance for a judging panel, during events that can be long, stressful and overwhelming. I haven’t fully closed the door on competing, because there are competitions that interest me and that can help me craft acts according to the guidelines they provide, but I can honestly say it’s been the best decision I ever made when it comes to my pole dance and performing career, my earnings and my mental health.
I won’t go into the benefits and drawbacks of competing, because you can find them in the blog post linked above, but I will say that the conscious decision of taking a step back led to a lot of unconscious decisions about where to perform, triggering a lot of reflections about how I experience performing at pole events in contrast with how I experience it at cabarets, parties, nightlife and events.
As I’ve said multiple times, when I started off in pole there weren’t many opportunities for newbie performers to gain experience, and competitions gave me a chance to develop as a dancer, to choreograph routines and perform for an audience while finding my style. It is thanks to those experiences that I have connected with other dancers and become more experienced, because competitions aren’t solely about going on stage, but also about sharing spaces with fellow polers and testing your limits. Because of this, pole competitions are fantastic networking spaces if you have a pole business, or if you teach, but as I’m now a semi-retired instructor (I want to focus on academic work to keep pole mostly as a space of leisure), those networking opportunities interest me less.
Precisely because competitions can be attended by hundreds of pole dancers who are about to be judged on their ability, they are also, inevitably and inherently, spaces of comparison. I have often written about not suffering from imposter syndrome in my academic work, because I know I have earned my stripes and believe my research is valuable no matter how much I struggle to get a permanent job. The same cannot be said about my relationship with pole: I’m not a trained dancer, and as someone who started pole dancing as an adult with no strip club experience I have often feared that people would be able to ‘tell’ I am not polished enough, or would believe I’m ‘stiff’ and that I don’t embody sexiness well enough.
I’ve become way more confident throughout the years, and have been able to manage the voice in my head that says that my dancing – something I’ve come to at an emotional time in my life, and that I feel more vulnerable about as a creative endeavour – is not good enough. But to feel good about it, I’ve had to do a lot of work to trace which elements of performing took me to that unhelpful place. A lot of that was putting myself in situations where I was going to be judged, or that fostered comparison, tiredness and pushing myself towards injury to score points instead of enjoyment.
To be clear: as I’ve argued before, competing can be useful, fun and generative for so many dancers, and many polers don’t feel like me about it. But this is why competing isn’t for everyone, and why I’ve decided to take a step back. It’s just not for me.
Instead, I isolated the elements of performing that made me feel alive and happy, and those were strictly connected to bringing a performance to the stage for people to see and be entertained. It was all about that short adrenaline burst and that connection with people for me, and that quickly goes away if you’re spending twelve hours at competitions waiting to be judged. So slowly but surely, I became more intentional about the spaces where I decided to perform, as well as about the people I chose to collaborate with.
Pole dance showcases (see The Pole Nook showcases below, with pics by @annabelleyb) where people performed without competing made me feel more confident in stepping out of the competition space, and that’s where I started developing and showing acts that are now in my roster for events. In parallel, hanging out in London’s Queer and nighlife spaces helped me build connections with event organisers and performers I admire. Thanks to both experiences, I have now realised that performing at variety style events, where fewer pole performances are alternated with drag, burlesque and other shows, makes for a better experience for me.
The reasoning behind it is that while very often at pole events stages are removed from the audience, in these small-venue variety style shows you can often go into the crowd much more easily, adding more engagement and freestyle to your performance. This is something that I, as someone who often forgets her own choreo, really value because it allows me to freestyle and be more in the moment, leading me to enjoy dancing more, instead of worrying about having missed a trick.
Because these events are less crowded and dispersive, there is also more backstage camraderie between performers, something that at pole events you can get with a few people, but not with everyone due to the sheer size of showcases and comps.
Another huge difference is, of course, payment. Performing at competitions often results in loss of money between entry fees, travel, costumes, rehearsals etc., given that often neither pole showcases or competitions pay performers. Instead, performing at events often means you get paid, which is a big incentive to make you feel recognised and valued as a performer. This is not without its politics: there are performers who are known to undercut others’ fees to make a name for themselves, and there are routine digital arguments about who should and shouldn’t get hired at said events, which often inflame various communities. These issues are, I think, part and parcel of every environment.
A vital and last element of these difference is connection to Queerness. A lot of pole spaces can be inherently Queer or Queer friendly, because they are dominated by gay men and often Queer women, but the reality of what I’ve seen is that straightness, or a performance of straightness, can dominate in many settings. They don’t feel the same in terms of audience, self-presentation and performance style as Queer events. And as a bisexual woman currently in a relationship with a man – the relationship where I’ve felt like myself the most, because he was my best friend before and knows me well enough to cherish different elements of my self-presentations and identity – I currently have very little ways to perform and be surrounded by Queerness. Because of this, events and nightlife feel like a lifeline and provide an added element of engagement, interaction and community, something that sometimes feels lost in pole outside of separate, smaller communities within the industry.
Why I no longer want to perform for social media platforms
I am an average Millennial: I came of age at a time when the possibilities social media platforms used to offer were endless, when it seemed you could make a career out of posting your opinions on Twitter and your lunch on Instagram. I reaped the benefits of that myself, building a successful blog in Italian through sharing my writing on Facebook and Twitter first, then getting incredible travel and lifestyle opportunities through posting content on blogs and socials in English. It seemed natural, at the time, that my excitement about pole would result in yet another blogging pivot and income stream, particularly at a time when I couldn’t afford a lot of the freebie perks I was being offered in exchange for reviews because I was retraining as an academic and working multiple jobs.
Having a pole blog and connected social media content did pay off. I would argue it’s why I have built a network of pole dancers, why I became a brand ambassador for a major pole brand, and why I get performance opportunities in the first place.
Yet, my relationship with how I perform pole dance on social media platforms – i.e. with how and how much I post pole dancing content on them – is changing in parallel with how my relationship with social media themselves as an activist, scholar and content creator is changing. This is due to several factors, largely related with getting older, but with platforms themselves changing too.
- ‘Sexy Jail’. Platforms’ increased moderation of nude, sex-positive, sex work and pole dancing content, whether through outright de-platforming or shadowbanning, makes curating posts a lot of hassle without much reward in terms of views, opportunities and connections. As I found in my recent paper about ‘Sexy Jail’, aka perennially being orange in Instagram’s Account Status while having to constantly appeal a shadowban, this constant invisibility doesn’t just affect the popularity and views of your own account: it prevents users from seeing and being inspired by other dancers. So by posting I essentially perform for a platform that doesn’t value me, but still stores my body, my data and the skills I took years to build, with little rewards.
- Aggressive sales and post-social media. Social media platforms have stopped being spaces for community, connection, creation and expression, and have become digital supermarkets instead. In these spaces, the experience is no longer social, but para-social and akin to traditional entertainment, whereby few accounts with a high following (like celebrities and influencers) post for the many viewers and consumers who watch them like they were watching TV… for free. At the same time, as Pam Briggs and I found in a recent study, a lot of what we see is algorithmically recommended ads or sponsored content instead of what we actually want to see, namely the people we have followed or that we love.
- Outrage vs conversation. Research has found that social media algorithms tend to promote and push divisive content that stokes outrage and division much more than factual, informative or just wholesome content. I have seen that in the pole dance industry: the only time I see pole content go viral, or the times that my content does well, is when there’s some sort of pole drama that we are debating collectively. This is exhausting,and gives the impression that we’re always angry or divided. We often do have reasons to be angry because the horrors, inequalities and discrimination in our industry persist, but it is telling that the everyday, joyful stuff doesn’t get recommended to us as much and only drama goes viral. I don’t want to be part of this mechanism, because it’s anxiety-inducing and triggering. To be clear: this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call out injustice online. It just means that paying attention to how we engage – e.g. calling out wrongdoing and instead telling people to kill themselves (which I have sadly seen happen), which just drives more outrage and more abuse.
- Optimising my time. As I argued in a recent reel, I am tired of pouring energy somewhere that doesn’t give back. It is important for me to curate Insta stories about topics that matter to me, to amplify voices who have a more insightful point of view than mine. However, Instagram’s move to limit the visibility of political content and its recent change in reach measurement counting only posts that are consumed from start to finish as a full view have made my reach tank, making the sharing of political content beyond hollow re-posts a time-consuming and fruitless task. This, in addition to all the factors mentioned above, makes me want to post less – and this includes how I perform and post pole on social media.
- Earning money through a ‘digital business card’ rather than through content creation. All the above reasons make monetising content creation less and less appealing, not just for the sheer unpredictability of it all, but for the free labour of putting together content that may not do well. I’m very grateful that the collaboration choices I made in 2025 mean that I don’t feel obliged to earn money by creating content. I’m open to it, but that was never why I was on platforms in the first place: they were a digital business card to be able to enjoy life offline. Luckily now I have built enough of a brand that I can use my socials as a way to get bookings as a speaker or performer, rather than wasting time creating ads that don’t feel true to myself or my profession as a critical creator scholar. Now, if people want to see me beyond a short clip, they can pay a ticket that feeds into my booking fee – and I can connect with people in real life at those events, rather than having to go on a doomscroll to try and find content I care about.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a performer because I am a creator. Creating content arising from my performances and my pole experience is why I got those opportunities in the first place. But in the past I spent so much time sharing and creating because, deep down, I thought that my performances would do less well. Now that I am more confident and that the relationship between free labour and paid performances skews in favour of paid performances, I do not want to give things away for free any longer.
A lot of this is also a consequence of getting older, of craving stability and of wanting to protect elements of my private life that, in the past, I was more up for sharing because experimentation and confrontation had been a huge part of my personal growth, and because platforms seemed less ‘evil’. Now that I have so much evidence showing how posting on platforms makes less sense I can take stock and re-evaluate a relationship that is no longer positive.
My new approach is, unfortunately, not accessible to the new generation of creators who took up this work when growing has become so much harder (see my Sexy Jail paper for that), but this is where I’m at. I feel like I’ve given enough – too much! – to tech companies that don’t value me, so now I’m going to use them in the same utilitarian way they use me, because I’m a tired Millennial.
Updates from my latest performances
On the weekend of the 9th and 10th of May I performed back-to-back at two events: Hot N Bothered’s Lesbian Field Day cabaret at Love Affair Basement, and at the 30th annual Sexual Freedom Awards ceremony, where I was also a judge for the fourth year running. Both events were of the rewarding, fulfilling and fun kind I described above, meaning I focused on being in the moment, enjoying my time on stage and connecting with people instead of getting a good video for the ‘Gram.
I had been in conversation with the Hot & Bothered organisers for a few years by now, because I loved watching this London-based collective creating inclusive social spaces by dykes, for dykes (of all genders) host performers and SWs I admire. They asked me to perform a few times, but I always said no because it was at venues that did not have poles, and given their events included lap dances and strip shows, I didn’t want to take up the space that was rightfully there for sex workers as the experts in those activities. When Lesbian Field Day came along in Hackney at one of my favourite venues – Love Affair Basement, where my birthday shoot took place last year – I couldn’t help but say yes.
Having grown up in small-town Sardinia in the early 2000s as a bi kid, I had close to zero opportunities to hang out in femme Queer spaces. Performing at one almost in my backyard meant the world, on a gorgeous day that gathered together different Hackney venues to celebrate lesbians. The backstage vibes with the very small line-up of performers were immaculate, and their performances smoking. I really enjoyed performing for the girlies and the theys, who were a fabulous audience, and I was proud of what I did despite only having just a few weeks to prep. I went home with a very full heart.
The 30th annual Sexual Freedom Awards were the grand finale of a weekend of performances, with a crowd that was bigger and louder than ever, and the return of many past winners and friends of the awards to celebrate three decades of the ceremony. As I then have to judge the Performer and Stripper categories live at the event, I always open the show.
For both Hot N Bothered and the SFA, I chose to dance to The Struts’ Kiss This, which I first heard when Maneskin covered it through a pole dance performance at the Italian X-Factor. I like how energetic, cheeky and rock n’roll this song is, almost a goodbye and Mic Drop of a song – and as this was going to be my last year judging the SFA for a while, I thought it was time to use it.
Precisely because I was performing on two days straight (while also working at the LSE during the marking period, going through lots of student assignments), I knew I couldn’t realistically come up with two different acts, and I also knew I couldn’t do much more than being myself. I usually like doing something theatrical, or a themed performance, but as I was injured following a previous event and then on holiday, this act was all I could really come up with in less than three weeks.
The result was, unexpectedly, very fun. Another difference I’ve noticed between the pole and cabaret worlds is that while competitions are announced months in advance (and therefore mean sometimes I prep for a performance for as long as three months, because you have one shot at it and #anxiety), my experience with cabaret bookings has been much quicker (e.g. getting asked about a month in advance, if not less). This has meant that I work more on getting a draft together, focusing on key moments and beats to hit, than on getting a full choreo ready, editing my performance according to the space I’m in and taking time to freestyle when I’m in the moment.
At the SFA especially, taking advantage of Heaven’s huge three-layer stage, this meant I could writhe all over the floor, split and headbang in ways teenage me couldn’t have imagined even in her wildest dreams. Never thought I’d headbang in a performance, but I had so much fun going off of the crowd’s energy that I just lost myself in music.
All of the above – the focus on entertaining rather than on perfection, making room for freestyle and tweaks on the day, having less time to hate a song because of repeated rehearsals – crystallised my feelings about which spaces feel best for me to perform, and in short, social media aren’t included in those, because you can only enter flow state so much when mediated by a screen.
Videos are always welcome – I do have to promote myself! – but short clips are now my main focus instead of sharing several takes.
Have I ‘left’ the online pole community?
As I was writing all of this, I kept thinking: will people think I ‘left’ the pole community because I no longer want to perform for the ‘Gram?
No, I haven’t. Pole dancers are still some of my favourite people, and I’m always open to meaningful digital chats and to connecting IRL. It’s just that my focus is shifting from an online to an offline life, and I don’t want the digital spaces where the pole world hangs to rule my life anymore.
When I stopped teaching pole regularly and when I stopped competing I was plagued by the fear of becoming irrelevant to an industry that had meant so much to me, but I hadn’t realised how much that industry was becoming irrelevant to me. Not in the sense that I don’t care about pole – it very much still is my life and a huge part of my identity, and I pole dance for at least an hour almost every day – but I am just not interested anymore in being a ‘voice’ in the industry, because we have so many more people who can be one. I’ve done my bit.
It became clear that ‘relevance’ was less about dancing and more about content, which is kinda the opposite of what I took up pole for.
I still strive to be there for people in my network, to provide as much public scholarship as possible through my research, and to uplift those who have uplifted me so much in the past or those who are overlooked by the mainstream media or research communities. But that’s it. I’m not interested in feeding the algorithm – be that through my performances, or through engagement with latest scandals if I don’t have any meaningful insight to offer.
As I continue attempting to distance myself from social media platforms, I am much more interested in doing pole for the main reason I took it up in the first place: its benefits for my physical and mental health, its power to make me rethink stigma and power relations, and performing for a loud, raucous audience instead of for a screen that prefers censoring me.
The bottom line is: I know so many fantastic performers from burlesque to stripping who don’t perform for for free. I think we, as pole dancers, should do the same and stop feeding our bodies, knowledge, learning into spaces that have now become solely extractive rather than generative. I am late to the party, but it’s time I stop doing it too. My aim is to only post as much as I have to in order to show I have done something or am available to do something else, for PR rather than content creation purposes.
I’ll basically, as the trending audio says, post myself working instead of my work (when I have to or want to).
A lot of this is about acknowledging what was good in the past and what no longer serves me, not just because I am an older, more confident, more experienced person, but also because the (digital) space I perform pole in is descending into sales-driven technofascism. And my ass deserves better.
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