https://slate.com/culture/2024/07/olympics-2024-paris-summer-usa-skateboarding-pole-dance.html?via=rss_socialflow_facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawEfWLVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHeB5J1i8ws3UrcEhbCS7iKg-9yEtB7KL5qjO9U5SmeeZcUTmgHKWmT8vlw_aem_8F-uGekpmq6J-uQ1n-MUCgOver the next few years, Coates devoted her life to this newfound skill, working as a pole dancer at London’s now-defunct adult lifestyle show Erotica, rigorously testing the world’s first portable pole (created by X-Pole in 2001) before it went into production, and setting up her own pole fitness school, the now-shuttered Vertical Dance, in 2004. But it was in 2006 that her Olympic dreams started to take shape.
“Pole became a fitness form for everyone to take part in,†Coates recalled. “It was a different way of getting fit, and it was great because it was super challenging but also a really fantastic social thing.†As the classes grew and spread across the country, small competitions started to spring up. “They were in backyards, nightclubs, or bars, with judges who were friends of friends or Z-list celebrities,†she explained. “People started working hard and putting effort into the shows, buying costumes, working out, and curating different influences for their choreography, from dance to circus. But they’d be judged on the loudest clap, so if you brought an entourage of 50 people, you’d tend to win. And I started thinking that was quite unfair—people were making a lot of effort and not really getting rewarded.â€
This effort included a lot of working out in order to maintain the extreme athleticism needed to pole dance—at least at a competitive level. As she had a pole at home (owing to her aforementioned side hustle as a portable pole tester), Coates could build this athleticism simply via, as she puts it, “practice, practice, practice.†Other pole dancers had to put in regular shifts at the gym to maintain the enviable level of fitness required. “I lift weights and train contortion a few times a week as cross-training for pole dance, as well as several hours of on-the-pole training and several hours of teaching each week,†Alyssa Taubin, a pole dance instructor and the owner of Seattle’s Positive Spin Pole Dance Fitness, said of her routine.