Bringing sexy back.

Sexy. It's easy to breeze right past the word, and the whole idea, when we see half-naked women plastered on every empty space, physical and digital, every day. It's too simple to think that there's no value to emphasizing the sexy in pole dancing - after all, hasn't it made us too easily mocked already? We're dismissed as strippers, sluts, whores, desperate for attention.

But deep into the first week, on the second year of UPA's Bringing Sexy Back, I've been thinking about why sexy is important in pole. Why it feels so satisfying to watch a class of Level 1 students, wide-eyed, laughing nervously with each other as they discover body rolls for the first time. What is it about that breathless, heart-thumping high I get from a no-holds-barred freedance in heels that makes me feel not just sexier, but more alive?


I don't think it's about the heels, not really. I don't think it's about showing off, and I don't think it's about getting attention. Pole dancing isn't sexy for any of those reasons. When I describe what I loved about a dancer's movement, "sexy" isn't a word I would reach for. I might say it was raw. Carnal. Intimate. Fierce. It was... wild. At the heart of it, I think wildness is what we all yearn for, and why sexy still matters in pole dancing. It's one of the most intense experiences, when the animal inside crawls out through your fingers and toes. It's why freedance is so delicious - because it's exploratory and unexpected. When, besides in the studio, did you last think about how steel felt against the nape of your neck, or brush the back of your hand across the floor? There's something deeper that comes out of me, and every man and women I dance with, on the pole.

It doesn't even have to be a body roll or a hair toss that brings out that wildness. It's the experience of moving without restriction - and pole lets us move in completely new ways. There's something wild about harnessing the tension-and-release of momentum, and about breaking through the pull of gravity. I hear a lot of talk lately about how it's just an apparatus, and how you can make whatever you want of the "vertical pole" - clearly separate from the "stripper pole." How it doesn't have to be sexy. Sure, you can put together a very clean performance with a modest costume, no lewd gestures and no hip rolls, but I would argue that any dance or circus performance is a little titillating. Pole dance isn't only sexy, it's so much more too - but pole dancers are wild, and wild is sexy. A little bit dangerous, a little bit vulnerable, a little uninhibited and unusual. What's not sexy about that?

So here's a swan song for bringing sexy back to pole, and for keeping it here. For teaching it to the newbies. For reminding the trickster students. For making time to let it out when you're all alone. For defending it against the naysayers. I don't know any dancer who doesn't delight in the exhilaration of snapping their legs apart in a dramatic kick, or savor the stretch of a spine arching, or the sound of their breath against the metal as they slide to the floor and the music fades. And feeling that animal heart thundering in the silence is what we all need more of. Here's to wildness. Here's to sexy.

Bonus for all you lovelies: here's a tune to inspire your wild little hearts.