I was fifteen years old when I stopped dancing. I was sixteen years old when I took myself off the stage completely. There were a variety of reasons for this, which I won’t get into for the sake of this post. I started taking pole dance classes last year on a whim. I wanted to make some new friends. I wanted to find a community of people who would accept me for who I am, flaws and all. I wanted to dance again, because it was one thing that always brought me such great joy. Joy, I have found, is the point of it all. That feeling is what gets me out of bed everyday, what keeps me motivated to keep going, what I strive to bring to others. I have found all of that in learning how to swing around a metal pole, and I have also found so much more.
This series is vastly different from the rest of the classes I have taken at the studio, and I chose it quite intentionally so. Turning forty feels important and insignificant at the same time. On one hand I have begun the lifelong process of becoming the person who I truly want to be, and on the other I feel like not much has really changed. I don’t feel any older, but I do feel more secure in myself. That feels big to me, and something that I think is worth celebrating. As a gift to myself this year and to come full circle at one year of coming back to dance, I am putting myself on stage again. I have three months total to choreograph and design my own piece, costume and all. It is both exciting and extremely terrifying to say the least, but isn’t that always how it feels when we push ourselves out of our comfort zones?
I decided to take this first performance and fuse it with my previous knowledge in classical ballet. I wanted to bring some elegance to a style of dance that gets such a bad rap. Obviously I had to include a spin titled Ballerina to pull it all together. My first attempt at this move was confusing until I looked back at the video, that it. I realized that I had my hand placements backwards, an easy adjustment to make once I figured that part out. It did give me the ability to play around with some other moves, so I’m not all too put out by that. And I still think it’s pretty.
This was my first run through of the choreography that I have planned and I am already seeing things that I want to change. I want to speed up the beginning and finalize that Ballerina move when I slam down into a squat. Marking where I should be in my dance with the timing of the music is helpful for me as I grew up counting beats…5, 6, 7, 8. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how to do that while spinning on a pole, but that will come in time. I have less than two months to figure it out. Wish me luck!
Mad love, Jenna
