What I Learned from Being in My First Pole Dancing Show
There is something I love about athletics, and it is that you can’t cheat. You can’t cram the way you cram for an exam. You can’t schmooze your way into a medal. You can’t sweet talk your way into a backflip. You can’t win by being accidentally convincing. You can’t lie your way to the top.
Most importantly, you can’t lie to yourself.
I had an opportunity to perform my own pole dancing choreography on stage. It was not my first time on stage pole dancing, and it was not my first time on stage dancing a choreography.
It was, however, my first time being on stage in which I am performing my own choreography that I had developed.
I trained and prepared for about four months.
Here are some of the things I learned:
I learned a trick! Yay! I’m going to put it in my dance!
Nope. I’m not going to be able to do that new trick when I’m tired. Or when I’m sad. Or when I’m nervous. Humble thyself before the gods.
OKAY, maybe I do not have to learn very many tricks. Maybe I can pull off this dance with my ETHOS and EMOTIONS!
Just kidding the “ethos” and “emotions” has to live on top of and inside of, you know, actual dance moves.
There are some dancers who seem like they can pull it off on ethos and emotion alone, but those dancers can also do the trick.
If I want that trick in my dance, I can make it three times easier, then put it in. That way there is a chance I will be able to do it elegantly and with emotions…
Hurray! I have figured out some dance moves I like, that I can do when I am tired, that I can imbue with the emotions I feel. Now I just need to come up with some transitions between them.
I am having some trouble, I will ask my teacher for some help with this transition. She will be able to tell me how to do it. She is an expert of decades, and told us to come to her for help sooner rather than later.
Oh, that transition not only have I not learned yet, but learning all the things I would have to learn about it to do what I want the transition to do, I would need at least five classes for, and that’s just to get the information without the practicing. The show is in three weeks. I have to change the tricks to be even easier, so that I can do an even easier transition between them that I know I can do.
I do not actually know how to do this easier transition. The teacher is showing me.
Now I have to do this transition, and the moves I have chosen, in my 8-inch heels. These shoes are heavy. Everything is slower.
Now that I know how much slower I have to move, to account for the heavy weight of the shoes when I’m on the floor, and the slower walking when I’m standing up, I have to re-calibrate the dance to the key points in the song, because now the entire timing is off.
I have been worshipping this teacher while I have been training. Now I am worshipping her even more. I am glad I picked a school with a teacher I like because I am training a lot.
I have to perform a demonstration for my teacher who I have been worshipping more than ever. I hope that she likes what I have so far. I hope that she does not notice that I have not choreographed the last 40 seconds of my song.
The teacher has noticed that I have not choreographed the last 40 seconds of my song. I was hoping that doing some things, with the right ethos and emotion, would be convincing as a choreography. I was not convincing.
I convince my teacher to let me finish the rest of the choreography, instead of cutting the song short, because I tell her I can use the last 40 seconds to leave the stage in a more interesting way than just walking off.
Suddenly I have a profound feeling of the relationship of dance to time. Dancing for 3 minutes and walking for 3 minutes take the same amount of time to watch.