This year for my husbands birthday, I brought us tickets to Miss Pole Dance Australia. Reactions vary when you tell people this, as most people view pole dancing as a sleazy, pornographic, degradation to women.
I can safely tell you people that Pole Dancing is none of these things.
The Pole Dancing Championships were held this year at the Enmore Theatre, for its third year running, the venue was sold out and there were a total of 15 competitors from around the country vying for the prestigous title of Miss Pole Dance Australia. The winner goes to Jamaica for the Pole Dancing World Championships in March, to date, Australia has never won this title.
To quash the notion that the event would be a seedy booze hound male filled cesspool of sweat and semen couldnt be further from truth, the place was packed to the rafters with women, many of them students of pole dancing classes around Sydney, but also family & friends supporting their daughters, and lets just face it - women can appreciate really sexy women without being a lesbian. I saw only 5 guys in the place who fit the sleazy stereotype, however if they thought they were in for an eyefull of flaps, they were wrong.
Pole Dancing is a competitive sport, it combines agility, flexibility, upper-body strength, many of them lithe dancers who have been classically trained in ballet and gymnastics. No fake blonde hair or implants in this group.
Each competitor is judged on their pole skills, manouvres, and style. It boggles the mind how one person can suspend themselves sideways from a pole using just their armpit. There were some performers who varied from doing the 'kate moss' (just standing around the pole), to women who could hang upside down using just a toenail.
However, nothing prepared us for when this years winner (and winner in 2006)
Felix Cane took the stage. If God came down from heaven and started to Pole Dance, this is what Felix was like, she was uber-sexy, graceful, and looked like she was born to be on a pole. Upside down, sideways, lengthways, upways, Felix defies gravity.

You really had to feel sorry for the girls that followed her.
This year they introduced doubles-pole which is two women doing synchonised pole dancing, or combining moves on the same pole. How they don't end up with a heel in the eye i'll never know?
The girls all varied with their looks and routines ranging from; Bjork on a pole, rockstar on a pole, ballerina on a pole, egyptian on a pole, geisha on a pole, during the tandem pole -NIDA on a pole (read: bad, really bad) noone wants to see you act and sing, just get on the freaking pole! Some girls didnt even have high heels on which i found offensive, sure you can do all those moves but its not sexy if you're doing it in sneakers now is it??
However I can not forgive the organisers for what they did to the crowd after seeing all these amazing sexy performers, by putting on the last contestant, which can only be described as a Man on a Pole. Noone wants to see that, clearly she was a prostitute, this is competitve sport she-male, noone wants to see you rubbing your gonads when you're lying on the ground. FAIL.
I feel I am now completely knowledgeable on what makes a good pole dancer, so unfortuately on my next outting to a strip club, i'll be the one with a notepad judging on the strippers ability to pull themselves upside down, to suspend themselves using just a knee. I am totally awe inspired by all the competitors though (even the prozzie) as if I tried my hardest to spin myself upside around a pole I would end up in hospital.
Alls I know is, I have to get some money together to afford the trip to Jamaica next year, can you imagine the crazy shit that would be going down on those poles, I bet they are so good they dont even need a pole and they can just hang upside down in midair defying gravity all on thier own.
Pfft gravity, a pole dancers kryptonite.