This is your fault, Canada.
VERTICAL HORIZON
The idea of exercising with the use of a vertical pole goes back nearly 1,000 years to the Indian gymnastic sport called mallakhamb. But turning those gymnastic gyrations into a sexy dance is a more recent phenomenon. Some trace the first combination of vertical poles and stripping to a 1968 at an Oregon bar called Mugwumps. Others claim that topless go-go dancer Carol Doda began pole dancing at the historic Condor Club in San Francisco as early as 1964. Regardless of where it started, pole dancing is now permanently associated with strip clubs.
Sometime in the 1990s, people began to realize that pole dancing could be more strenuous than simply spinning and gyrating around a vertical pole. Some of the more fit erotic dancers integrated acrobatic moves into their pole dances, using core and limb strength to climb, spin, and dance up and down the pole. It wasn’t long before the idea of pole dancing for fitness—for non-strippers spread.
BLUE MONDEY
Canadian exotic dancer-turned-body builder Fawnia Mondey is credited with helping to spread the popularity of pole dancing to non-strippers, and she produced the first-ever pole dancing DVD. She also founded a Pole Dancer Instructor Certification program and is on the board of the Pole Fitness Association (yes, it’s real).
By 2007, major newspapers and magazines like the New York Times were running articles about pole dancing spreading to suburban New York housewife circles, and poles even being found in limos, as part of college fundraisers and even at bar mitzvahs. While pole dancing had a fitness component, it was still laced with a “bad girl” vibe.
JUNIOR DIVISION
But leave it to some enterprising Canadians to turn the trend into child’s play. Literally. Tammy Morris, a former exotic dance champion (yes, that’s real, too) from Vancouver got international attention for offering pole dancing classes at her studio, Tantra Fitness, to nine-year-olds, with private instruction available for kids as young as five. Morris told Fox news in 2010, “Moms had brought their kids to classes for one reason or another, maybe lack of child care. If that was OK with the parents, that was OK with us.”
Morris says there was nothing inherently sexy about the classes, despite class titles such as “Pussycat Dolls,” “Promiscuous Girls,” “Bellylicious” and “Sexy Flexy.”
IF THEY JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE…
Morris thinks that pole dancing is innately about fitness, and anything tawdry is purely secondary or not applicable. “Our classes are very fitness focused,” she said. “We’re not teaching how to grind or undulate, we’re teaching a gymnastics style class on the pole.” Besides, Morris points out, mothers can judge for themselves if it’s appropriate to bring along their daughters, and that demonstrations of fitness pole dancing have been shown on family-friendly daytime TV shows, like The Oprah Winfrey Show and Ellen.
“Children have no (erotic) association with the pole whatsoever,” she added. “Unless you teach someone how to grind and make reference to taking off your clothing, there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Morris isn’t alone. Kristy Craig of The Twiste Grip Dance and Fitness Studio, in Duncan, B.C., offered a “Little Spinners” pole dancing class to kids—girls and at least one boy—as young as five, saying that, “My existing students were asking about it for their children. They were saying, ‘My daughter plays on my pole at home all the time, I’d love her to actually learn how to do things properly and not hurt herself.”
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CAPTAIN OF THE UNIVERSE
In 2009, a fan wrote William Shatner a letter, suggesting that he nominated himself to be Canada’s governor general. Shatner set his sights higher. “My intention is to become prime minister of Canada, not governor general, which is mainly a ceremonial position,” was his official reply.
In Canada, 0.3% of all road accidents involve moose.