Tag Pole Dance

Ageing as a pole dancing academic

Today I am turning 33! So I’m celebrating the only way I know how: the no chill way. By dropping my photoshoot pictures inspired by The Last Supper, through this post I reflect on ageing as a woman, as a…

Elvira Langdon interview

Elvira Langdon is one of the most accomplished pole dance performers I know. At only 19 years old at the time of writing, she has won 14 titles, created a taboo-defying pole competition, taught many classes and workshops, and campaigned…

YAS Work interview

YAS Work is an advocacy, media and consulting company centring the needs, knowledge and expertise of strippers and sex workers. When I heard that the company was trying to change the way pole dance is represented in events and entertainment,…

Five years of Blackstage

Five years ago, Leila Davis (@cutiewhippingham) founded Blackstage, a non-profit events company centring and enhancing the creativity of pole dancers of colour, with a special focus on Queer, Trans, Disabled, low-income or sex working performers. The rest, as they say,…

Exotic Hell – year one

In October I was a guest speaker and performer at Exotic Hell, Elvira Langdon’s brand-new pole dance competition which promised to be the first openly transfeminist pole competition in Italy, platforming and centring sex workers and the erotic. In case…

Doing both: the challenges of being a pole dancing academic

“Get you a girl who can do both – pole dance and academia” (and who gets, like, really anxious about it). “Doing both” was, for a while, my brand, something I lived and breathed, without too much thought. But as…

Governing pole dance: why is it so difficult? 

Following recent safety concerns at competitions, mentions of a governing body for the pole dance industry have been floating around again. My name has been made a few times as someone who may be interested in taking part in it,…

Competing: why I’m taking a break

I’ve decided to take a break from competing in pole dance competitions, meaning that PDSM, which you may have read about here, will be my last comp for a while. In this blog post, I explain why I wasn’t enjoying…

Reflecting on the Blackstage Talks panel

After the Blackstage Talks: Breaking Moulds panel I was honoured to have chaired, I have been sitting on a lot of thoughts following the incredibly generative conversations we had with pioneers in our industry. As a result, this blog post…

Nuda per la prima volta a PDSM

Questo mese ho fatto parte di PDSM, Pole Dance Stripper Movement, la gara di pole dance di Gemma Rose. PDSM è una gara creata da una spogliarellista per celebrare le origini della pole dance. Visto che avviene in uno strip…

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