Pantera Pole Dance Workshop

Last week, I wrote about getting to meet Pantera. This week, I thought I’d dive into the heart of the workshop – Pantera’s pole dance classes and her incredible performance.

Pantera’s Pole Dance Performance

Most of the pole dancing I’ve seen has been on Youtube, so it’s always a thrill to see someone pole dance for real. Yet, when someone of Pantera’s caliber takes the stage, it’s something else entirely.

Normally, when someone begins a pole dance, there’s a moment when you see them move onto the pole. With advanced dancers, it’s a very smooth transition, but you still see it.

With Pantera, you don’t.

Pantera is a purely aerial performer – she is always on the pole. She walks out on stage, extends her arm, and floats right into the air.

I know how strong she is, and how hard she trains. I know how much effort she has put into learning to dance the way she does. But in the moment of watching her, you can’t see any of that. She is a true dancer, and you never see the strain; you only see the beauty of the movement.

Pantera can flip positions in a millisecond; she is most comfortable when upside down and is, apparently, immune to centrifugal force.

Which is to say, the girl can pole. Hell, can she pole. Go see her.

Pantera’s Pole Dance Classes

And, while you’re at it, don’t just go see her. Go study with her. Wherever you are, get to wherever she is and take a class.

That’s what I did.

Truth be told, I had actually considered backing out of the workshop due to some back problems. If you know me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve already heard the whining, but the upshot was that I hadn’t conditioned myself properly before trying to do inverts, and my back was wigging out.

Happily, Pantera is very safety-conscious and begins every class by gathering information on each student’s injuries, pole skill level, and personal goals. So, I told her right off about my weird back situation and that it had left me nervous to even spin.

This turned out not to be a problem, since Pantera doesn’t teach spins. Of course, this means she teaches strength moves and leaves your body a limp rag by the end of the workshop – but, I figure that’s the whole point of a pole dance weekend.

Silly Me

I had let myself be convinced to sign up for the intermediate class and – don’t laugh – the intermediate/advanced class. Yes, I know I’m always saying what a beginner I am, and I absolutely insist on maintaining that status, but, it seems, by some freak of the stars, I could climb and do a seat and all the rest of the things they wanted for the intermediate class.

Convincing me I should take the advanced class took some doing, but I eventually understood that most of the people attending were just beginning to invert and I would be just fine. And since, when I first signed up for the workshop, my back hadn’t yet flipped out, I figured I’d give it a whirl. Besides, Pantera, I was told, adjusts the training to the needs of each individual student. I’d be fine.

Feats of Strength

The thing is, Pantera’s idea of a starting point may differ a bit from your own.

For instance, we started doing some climbs and planks, but then quickly moved on to handstands. Now, I’m not exactly Little Miss Gymnast, and my experience with handstands has led me to believe they should be left alone until they learn how to behave.

But Pantera actually shows you how to do them – and, for when you are practicing at home, how to have someone spot you on them. Pantera is big on strength and control; she doesn’t like you to use my usual manner of acceleration – the flailing kick and prayer to the gods of momentum. Nope, she likes you to just use your core and lift your body.

Hmm. My core. That would be that thing I should have been working on all this time, but haven’t been.

You see, apparently, there are all these muscles in your body that you can actually use to, you know, move your body – and sometimes they can even be used to LIFT your body. So, I’m planning on getting me some of those.

For the workshop, though, I just faked it. (I’m sure no one could tell.)

Feats of Physics

Of course, the faking it got a little more difficult come the advanced class. Pantera had us practicing inverts. And, if you refer to the paragraph above regarding the core muscles that Pantera likes to believe we all have, you will not be surprised that she also believes you should use them when inverting.

In Pantera Land, you actually are supposed to be strong enough to lift your heinie into the air, just like lifting your arm (which, by then I couldn’t do anymore, either). So, I tried. I ignored my habit of kicking up to invert and, instead, attempted to lift my body, tip backwards, and – with great control – place my legs on the pole.

This never happened. Not even with spotters.

Still, I got the gist of what I was supposed to do, and I learned some exercises to help me get there. But then it turned out that the Scorpio I had learned is actually the Gemini to everyone else, and that the Scorpio as they learn it, is easier to start with than the Scorpio that I learned. But none of that matters since I could not do the Scorpio as they learned it.

Pantera went from one person to the next, spotting and tweaking and giving pointers. When she came to me, she flipped herself up onto the pole with that deceptive grace that lures each of us into pole in the first place. You know how it goes – you start watching a pole video and thinking, oh, I could do that! So you order a pole and then find you can’t do any of it, and have actually been existing for years without any muscle tone whatsoever.

And then, god help me, she put the pole on spinny …

Epilogue

Did I finish the workshop exhausted and limp? Yes. Was my every aching muscle in mutiny? Yes.

But did I learn more about pole than I ever had before? Yes.

And did I have fun?

Absolutely.

But that’s Pantera for you in a nutshell: an intense, ass-kicking, pole dancing goddess, who just happens to be fun as hell.

If you missed it earlier, be sure to read the prologue to this post, in which I meet Pantera and coo at her like a deranged groupie. Gotta love it.

Tags: Pole Dance, Pole Dancing

September 14, 2009 - Posted by PoleSkivvies 2 Comments
Filed under: Pole Dancing Instructors