From Strip Club to Health Club: Pole Dancing Goes Aerobic
The most surreal experience was the subway ride afterwards. I squeezed through the doors, pushed through a crowd of people, and there it was, now in an entirely new light. As I gripped its shiny surface, I realized a profound truth: I will never look at a pole the same way again.
My arms and legs ached. My shoulder was bruised. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. It had indeed been a workout.
Hours before, I’d entered a room on the 20th floor of an office building, thinking, like many others, that I’d take a crack at pole dancing. I hadn’t walked into a strip club – those are illegal here.
Besides, at the LoLan Pole Dancing Fitness Center, pole dancing has come a long way from its naughtier roots. Aerobic pole dancing has a growing following in Beijing and beyond: LoLan has five branches across the country, and several competing pole-dancing fitness schools have risen in the capital. “How hard can it be?” I asked myself.
In my mind’s eye, I saw women effortlessly twirling, suspended several feet above the floor, gracefully conducting what amounted to a midair tea party. That image was soon to explode into a cloud of chalk dust, as the instructor thrust a tub of it in my direction. “You’ll need this,” she barked. I got the impression that her cerulean booty shorts and matching sports bra had replaced, in the very recent past, the drab greens of a PLA drill instructor.
Standing awkwardly by my pole, I surveyed the room. I was the only male in the class. I was the only American in the class. And I was the only one without thigh-high polyester boots and exposed midriff.
Despite the dress code, it’s not what you think: None of the Chinese people I have asked see any connection between pole dancing and stripping. And while my fitness class can trace its ancestry to dimly lit gentlemen’s clubs, the two have evolved in dramatically different directions. As the lesson began, my mind struggled with the pole-dancing paradigm shift: Pole dancing aerobics has taken the concept of scantily clad women gyrating sensually on a pole and turned it into a fully-clothed fitness activity.
We started off like any other aerobics class. We stretched. The stereo cranked out a techno remix of an Enya tune.
Then, the mounting. With military efficiency and consummate skill, our instructor swung her legs six feet into the air, wrapped her thighs around the pole and hovered upside-down, while commanding the class to do the same.
I tried grabbing the pole, but my hand slipped with a pathetic squeak. I added more chalk and tried again. This time, I managed to get my body into the air, but I slowly slid down the length of the pole till my shoulder hit the mat. I had now learned lesson one: Keep your hands, and the pole, as dry as possible.
The others weren’t having much luck either. Save for the instructor and her two assistants, squeaks came from every pole. The sky was raining hot pants as several of my classmates hit the mat. We laughed the first few times. But then frustration turned to anger, anger to despair.
Our instructor strode the mats issuing crisp, clipped instructions: “Get back up!” “Grip harder!” “Put that pelvis closer to the pole!” At one point, she forcibly removed someone’s hands from the pole, causing the student to swing backwards and hit her head on the mat.
The music took a turn for the absurd: “Yakkety Sax” mingled with a clubhouse beat. By this point, most of the dancers were wallowing on the floor in a puddle of self-doubt. I saw an exasperated red-booted woman with tears welling in her eyes. She blinked hard and went once more to the pole.
The class lasted exactly 60 minutes. We learned to hover, hang, twirl and hip-grasp. Tears were shed, sweat was sweated and dreams were born. And we grew closer together in our ordeal. I felt more a part of a sports team than a strip club. I might as well have had a number on my back, or, perhaps, across the back of a pair of Daisy-Duke cut-offs.
I learned many things that night about this art – no, this skill – and its rigors. But most of all, I learned about myself. I came to Lolan Pole Dancing Fitness Center a boy, and I left a man.
Lolan Pole Dancing Fitness Center Rm 5, 20/F, Bldg C, Soho New Town, 88 Jianguo Lu, Chaoyang District. (5126 9914) www.gangguanwu.com 罗兰钢管舞，朝阳区建国路88号SOHO现代城C座20楼05室
This article was excerpted from the Insider’s Guide to Beijing. Fully updated for 2009, the guide is available in stores in Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities and on the web at Amazon.com and www.immersionguides.com. To have a copy delivered to your home, office or hotel in Beijing, call 5820 7101 or e-mail distribution@immersionguides.com .