Grips & Holds

I still feel so new at this and yet at the same time I feel like I have come so far. Eight weeks of Shapes 0 taught me four basic hand positons. I wrote about a couple of them in the first diary entry about this session.

We have True Grip, AKA Dick Grip, which is the first one they teach you. Then there is Split Grip, which unfortunately I had to get a quick lesson on that in the final class because I ended up getting a migraine and having to leave before the class even started. Bummer. We then learned Twisted Grip, which just feels insanely awkward to me so I don’t tend to use that one very often. Bracket Grip, jokingly called T-Rex Grip, is actually my favorite as I personally feel the most secure on the pole.

In the previous video you can see me use Bracket Grip to climb the pole. Most of the other people in the class preferred to climb with True Grip. That’s sort of the interesting thing to witness. We all have preferences in the ways in which we dance. We all use these grips and shapes to create such different movements. Not one of us looks the same or puts together the same combinations of moves, yet it’s all so beautiful in its own way.

Much of what we learn in class is about learning how to push yourself away from the pole while at the same time pulling into it. I know. That sounds confusing as fuck and that’s because it is at first. It made my brain hurt until it finally clicked.

In the previous video the instructor taught us a short choreography to help us understand how to chain the moves together and make them flow more easily. We were focusing on how to twist our torso around midair in order to reestablish your position on the pole. I was exhausted after 45 minutes of practice, hence the no shoes.

We did our final dance in the second to last class. I wasn’t really trying to focus on creating any specific moves as I was in the previous classes. In the beginning I simply wanted to create some video content that I could look back through and not only determine my progress, but also as a reference to come back to for myself. This session was a lot of information, and I am not even entirely sure how much of it I have retained at this point.

The final class was like a giant review session right before an exam minus the test part. We don’t grade or judge ourselves in this space; we simply create. We use movement as an art to feel out our emotions. We use the music to act as our guide throughout the process. We encourage each other. We help each other. We become each other’s cheerleaders. We end up as friends, all standing at the bottom of the exact same pole.

Mad love, Jenna

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