There are very few things as sexy as hips. They strut, they tease – in short, they totally rule. And when pole dancing, you want to be sure not to leave them out. Hips are absolutely essential when doing transitions.
Belly Dance Moves Every Pole Dancer Should Know
As you’ve all come to know by now (or soon will), I am a belly dancer by training, and that infuses pretty much every kind of movement I do, pole included. Heck, pole especially.
It’s easy to get caught up in the gymnastic side of pole, but the dancing part is what pulls it all together. And belly dance moves go really well with pole. After all, both are very sultry, sexy dance styles, and both use a lot of isolations. I thought it would be great to show you some classic belly dance moves that you can easily work into any pole dance routine.
Reverse Horizontal Figure Eight
The reverse horizontal figure eight may not sound like the sexiest move, but, believe me, done well, it will knock their socks off! The video below will show you, step by step, how to do this move and ways to use it in conjunction with pole. There are a few things you should keep in mind as you watch:
Push into your hip sockets. This is essential for this move. You need to exaggerate the motion to get the figure eight effect.
Move slowly. Languorous movements are the essence of sultry dancing. Sure, dancing quickly looks cool, but if you do it slowly, you turn the show into one big tease.
Watch your hips as they move. When you watch your own movements, you pull the audience in through your gaze.
Use the pole as a frame. You can do this move in front of the pole, behind the pole, or next to the pole. However you choose, be aware that you are contrasting this curvy motion against the straightness of the pole. If you are in front of or behind the pole, make longer, slower movements to be sure the movement can be seen around the pole. If you are standing next to the pole, you can make the movement as big or as little as you like.
Do half the move. Sometimes, half a reverse horizontal figure eight makes for a beautiful transition. It can be used to turn you around smoothly, or to accentuate a pose.
Click on the video below to see how to do this move:
There you have it. A simple belly dance movement that looks beautiful when combined with pole. Play with it and let me know how it works for you!
In 2005, I saw an episode of Oprah. Several months later I was on a plane to L.A. for instructor training.
How did you make the leap to opening your own studio? What was that like?
I started small. I rented a studio space three days a week that allowed me to leave my pole up. I taught six women on one pole for over a year! It was scary moving into my own space, for sure, but I knew I had to in order to grow my business. I now have six poles and my very own space! I love it.
What is the first thing you teach new pole dance students?
Our sensuous warm up on the floor. Then, I teach them the ‘stripper stand up’ and how to walk around the pole.
How do you take care of yourself, given all the classes you teach?
I take a long nap when I am feeling wiped out. Also, I try to get a massage on a regular basis.
Favorite makeup tip:
It’s unbelievable what a difference your eyebrows can make. I keep mine plucked and shapely. I have light brows so I use a little shadow to shade them in.
Barefoot, sneakers, or platform heels?
I danced for two years barefoot, but now I am hooked on heels! I can’t dance without them.
Favorite grip enhancer:
The spray on version of GRRRIP for climbing and inverting, and the Eco Ball by Metolious for lighter grip.
Pole dance move that made you proudest to learn:
I get excited whenever I get anything new. I was really excited when I got the Superman and the Aisha. Also, I never thought I would be able to do the Knee Hold (ouch) or the Straight Edge.
Pole dance pet peeves:
Unpointed toes!
Favorite treatment for bruises and sore muscles:
Epsom salts. It’s a trick I learned while attending Cornish College of the Arts. I was taking ballet and modern dance and sometimes felt like I’d been hit by a truck after classes. A friend told me to soak in a hot bath of Epsom salts. It is amazing for achy, sore muscles.
Who would you most like to have in the audience when you pole dance?
I like dancing for my students the most. They really appreciate what it’s all about.
Who is your hero or role model?
Jesus is my hero.
What are your favorite words of encouragement?
Beautiful!
Favorite pizza toppings:
Pepperoni and pineapple.
Cupcakes or ice cream?
Ice cream – Dove with the layer of ganache on top!! YUM.
Anything else you’d like to share:
My favorite song to dance to right now is Starstruck by Santogold. Also, I really love Cold Cold Water by Mirah.
The fabulous Cynthia, owner and instructor at PoleAddix in Ohio.
How did you get started taking pole dancing lessons?
First off, I’m a mother of two, a son who is 30 and a daughter who is 26, and a grandmother of two wonderful grandsons. Secondly, I’m a wife to a super husband! And thats why I’m in the pole dancing community! He asked me 3 ½ years ago if I would take him to a dance club for his 55th birthday. I’ve never been to a club and I told him sure. I couldn’t believe it, there were some girls writhing around on the floor looking like a snake you would want to put out of misery, lol. No pole dancers. I said to my husband, “I would like to have a pole for Christmas, please!” And that’s how everything started. Now I have seven poles: one static, two spinner/statics, two petites, a Platinum Stage, and a brass pole in the house. That’s why I called my studio Poleaddix, because that’s what I am.
How did you make the leap to opening your own studio and offering pole dancing classes? What was that like?
I opened my own studio because the closest place that I could take classes at was over an hour away! I made up some cute flyers and started hanging them up at some local bars we frequent. We have our own Harleys, so we go to a lot of bike nights to meet with other bike enthusiasts! I thought gezz I bet some of the girls would like to take some lessons and have fun at the same time. Some did and a lot said what?.. no. But I kept my spirit up; I’m not a quitter.
I bought a manual from the girls at PoleAddiction. They have a great manual that I just followed through the whole book. And the help from all my sistas of the pole from Youtube. I couldn’t have made it without them!
What is the first thing you teach students just starting to take pole dancing classes?
STRETCH!!!, before any pole work. In fact, I get a hot bath, stretch in the house, then when I have class I also stretch with my students. I actually have fibromyalgia and arthritis, but since I’ve been doing pole work.. waalaa!.. I haven’t had any really bad days!
How do you take care of yourself, given all the pole dancing classes you teach?
My husband and I go to a local gym here in town three times a week. I only do a half hour, my husband does 45 minutes, it’s nice because I have a few minutes to talk to some of the ladies then. Oh yeah, and lots of steamy hot baths.
Favorite makeup tip:
I have been purchasing this yellow concealer instead of the color that matches the makeup color … wow, does it work better! Fills in and hides circles and blemishes.
Barefoot, sneakers, or platform heels?
Heels for me!! Ever since I was a little girl I loved wearing high heels! But, if I’m learning or teaching a new move on the pole, sometimes I like to wear my tennis shoes.
Favorite grip enhancer:
Rubbing alcohol.
Pole dance move that made you proudest to learn:
Grrrrr … The Superman.
Pole dance pet peeves:
I get upset when you try to tell some people that you teach pole dancing lessons for fitness and they say .. “Yeah, right!” and they don’t want to hear another word. Sad, that’s all I have to say.
Favorite treatment for bruises and sore muscles:
I know it sounds funny, but hot baths, and long sleeve shirts and jeans.
Who would you most like to have in the audience when you pole dance?
At first I read this question and I couldn’t come up with anything. This is my answer: all the people who didn’t think that I would amount to anything!
Who is your hero or role model?
I have to say that my husband is my hero for sticking it out with me and giving me the encouragement to pole on!
My model would have to be hiphopjo from Atlanta! I’ve been watching her from the get-go. But, I have to say one more thing about the models in my pole life, this is to all the sistas of the pole from Youtube. Thanks for being there and for sharing all your tips, tricks, and friendships forever!
What are your favorite words of encouragement?
You only live once, so never say never. I have always told my children, ”You can do or be anything you want to in life, just go for it!”
Favorite pizza toppings:
Oops! We don’t eat pizza.
Cupcakes or ice cream?
Nope … not those either.. now you’re making me hungry, Jennifer!
Anything else you’d like to share:
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Jennifer for giving me this space to share my dream and thoughts!
Thank you, Cynthia. And be sure to contact Cynthia at PoleAddix if you’re looking for pole dancing lessons in Ohio.
Improvving a pole dance means letting yourself move to the music naturally, without following a predetermined choreography. Being able to improv gives you the freedom to jump up and give a great performance at the drop of a hat.
The trick to successful improv is to stay very centered in your body and your emotions, so that you can move seamlessly with the music. You need to reach a point where you can trust your body to move in certain ways without hesitation.
At its highest levels, improv reaches a point of inward emotional focus in which your concentration is more on your feelings than on your movements. This requires a very high level of physical skill, a level where your movements are so ingrained in your body that they are nearly automatic, thus leaving you to expend your energy on expressing your feelings through the music.
It is good to remember that dance is always about expressing yourself through movement and interpreting music through movement. All pole dancers learn the same set of moves, but it is the ones who can create an emotional response through their dance that truly stand out.
Who can improv?
Anyone can learn to improv. I know this because belly dancing is heavily grounded in improv and, even though I began as a very clutzy, nervous student, I eventually became a very good improvisational belly dancer. The method I used for belly dance is the same one you can use for pole.
Some people naturally take to improv, while others prefer choreography, and both approaches can be wonderfully expressive. Try your hand at both and see which you prefer.
Music, music, music
As with choreographing a pole dance routine, good improv begins with knowing your music. Obviously, you can get up on a whim and dance to any piece of music, regardless of whether you’ve heard it before or not, but to give a good performance, you want to know your music inside and out. You want to get to a point where you can sing every nuance of the song in your head since, if you know what’s coming next, you can know how you want to move to it.
Let Yourself Play
Once you know your music well, start dancing to it. Don’t worry about how it looks or whether your moves are how you want them to be. Just give yourself the emotional permission to move. Play along with the music; don’t judge yourself or analyze. Beautiful improv begins awkwardly; that’s normal.
Let me tell you a story. When I was in grad school, I used to belly dance every Saturday night at a restaurant, giving four 30-minute dances (three on a slow night). Each dance was improvved. This took a lot of rehearsing, which may sound odd since, if it’s improv, what was I rehearsing? But the rehearsing was to let myself get used to moving fluidly with the music.
I would choose several pieces of music that I would dance over the coming weeks. I would listen and listen and listen to them, but I always found that, until I started dancing to them, there was always an extra level of nuance that I missed. At first it would be very clumsy dancing – the moves were done well, but it didn’t quite fit the music. So I would keep at it. Slowly, it would start to come together, and within a couple of weeks, I would find I was comfortable enough with the music that, although every time I danced it, I danced differently, the end result was a good performance.
Of course, life never makes a smooth line. Which means that I also found that, about two weeks prior to a given performance of a new song, it would all fall apart. Badly. What had just started to come together would suddenly disappear entirely. I would forget what was coming next in the music, I would get myself twisted in some weird way that completely ruined my balance or left me in just the wrong spot at the wrong point in the song.
But I never judged. I learned to keep dancing through to the end of the song. I learned to breathe and accept that that’s how that practice went and not to worry about it, and through doing that I learned that that was just my pattern. I always worked on a song, had it start to come together, two weeks before the performance date watched it disintegrate into crap, and then – lo and behold – watched it come together again even stronger.
So that’s why I tell you not to judge yourself. Improv needs to be free, or it can’t take you where you need to go. You will learn a lot about yourself if you let yourself give into your movements, even if you never intend to dance for an audience. Improv will make you braver and it will force you to keep dancing for an entire song, even when you misstep – and that will make you a better dancer.
One quick tip for better improvving
And that’s the quick tip: make yourself dance through an entire song. Don’t stop and start, just keep dancing. When you always begin again, you learn to stop when something strikes you as imperfect. When you force yourself to keep dancing, you learn to go with what you’re doing. Moreover, you will break yourself free of mental constraints on how you “should” be moving, and give yourself the chance to create something truly special.
A simple exercise to improve your improv
This is an exercise I learned from Cassandra Shore, my amazing belly dance instructor. She would assign each student a body part with which to improv. One student might have gotten hips, another arms, another the torso, and so forth. Then she would play music and ask each of us to dance using only that part of our body.
The result of this was that it automatically narrowed your focus. You couldn’t use your whole repertoire; you had to focus on expression to make it interesting. It’s a very intense exercise – one which, I admit, I used to dread and curse. But I’ve since grown to see the use in it.
To apply this exercise to pole, choose something from the list below, put on some music, and dance only with that movement for the entire song (give yourself a break and choose a short piece). When you can’t rely on a large range of moves, you will be forced to make each move more interesting and expressive, and your dancing will improve. Here is the list (feel free to add to it):
Fireman
Front and back hooks
Transitions
Floor work
Slides
Sits
Inverts (choose only one)
Give it a shot, even if it seems unnatural at first. You may need to incorporate a transition or two just to keep moving between spins, but stay as limited in your moves as you can for the duration of the exercise. Learn to dance each move with feeling, really interpreting the music with each move.
And, most of all, remember never to judge your process for creating dance!
*Have you ever tried to use the word “improv” with a spell-checker? It can drive you insane. Especially if you wish to break with All Things Right and True and use it as a verb – as in, “improvving.” So I thought I’d just let myself go hog wild, grammatically speaking, and totally fuck with the spell-check’s mind.
Last week I started talking about when to choreograph and when to improv pole dance routines. This week, I thought it would be cool to go into more detail about how to actually pull together a choreographed routine.
If I can do it, you can do it.
The first thing to know is that there are probably as many ways to do this as there are pole dancers. This is just what works for me, and I’ll be the first to tell you choreography isn’t really my thing. I am definitely more of an improv girl. On the other hand, if this helps even a choreography-challenged person such as myself create a routine, then it must have something going for it.
I’ve used this method a lot with my belly dance students, to give them a dance they can practice on their own, and it’s worked really well. My problem with choreography is more that I can’t remember what comes next in a sequence, but this process helps get it in my head.
Choose your music.
It all starts with the music. Things to look for in a song are interesting rhythm changes, a mix of softer and stronger sounds, and a mood that suits you. Basically, you want music you like, and you want something more interesting than a mindless groove even drunken frat boys can dance to.
Listen to your music.
Listen to it over and over and over again. And then listen to it again. Yes, again. You want to hear all the changes, you want to hear how the sounds mix with the lyrics. Listening with the idea of choreographing is different from listening while you dance in the car.
Make a list of all your moves.
List everything you can do and break it down into groups: transitions, spins, inverts, climbs, floorwork, contortions, and so forth. Circle the ones you especially want to use. Maybe you want to use them because you’re choreographing for a beginner class and those are the only two moves the class knows. Maybe you’re in a competition and certain moves are required. Maybe you just know some better than others and want to strut your stuff. Whatever the reason, if you want to be sure to use them, circle them.
Then, cross off the ones you haven’t quite perfected. Unless you are preparing a routine with months yet to practice, it’s best not to choreograph around moves you don’t feel comfortable doing. Leave them off the list for now – you can always use them next time. What’s left on the list are all the moves you can use to create your dance. You won’t use all of them, but it helps to have your whole repertoire in front of you.
Listen. Walk through. Choose. Repeat.
See which of your moves sound best with the music and walk through them while you listen. Use a bit of improv and a bit of imagination to choose the moves you want in your routine. Look at your list and listen to the first few measures of your song. What kind of feeling does it give you? Slow and sexy? Energetic? Dramatic?
Let yourself play a bit while you walk through it and you’ll find you come up with some great combinations. By walking through it, I don’t mean fully doing each and every move. I mean, stepping through it so you can see how the move fits the music and how the moves you want to use flow together. Keep your remote handy so you can pause and rewind the music as often as necessary. When you have some moves that work well, write them down. Then listen to the next bit of the song and go through the process again.
Keep doing this for each section of the music until the whole song is choreographed. Then do the whole routine for real, not just walking through the moves, but really doing them. You may find that some moves had seemed to fit, but don’t now that you’re actually doing the whole dance. That’s normal. Just change the moves to ones that fit better and write down the changes. Dance it through again, for real, until there are no more changes you need to make, and – voila – you have choreographed a pole dance routine!
A helpful reminder.
Let yourself move to the music as you go through the process above, and you will naturally include filler steps and accents. A lot of dancing isn’t dancing, per se. It’s walking to the music, or making a cool arm gesture, or kicking your hip out to accent a beat. You don’t want to get so wrapped up in your list of moves that you forget the subtler things that make up a dance, too. Letting yourself play with the music will make sure you don’t.
There you have it – a simple guide to creating a pole dance routine. Happy poling!
