darcit
Forum Replies Created
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I have an Isis sports bra that I love. The straps are convertible so they can be either straight over your shoulders or crossed in an X on your back.
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I've also been the only girl in a "girls don't work here" situation several times. I spent a lot of summers working in Montana and Idaho on fisheries crews that spent 8 days at a time in the backcountry doing research. I was always the only girl on the crew and often the only girl working out of the regional office. I found that guys were usually skeptical that I could "carry my weight" and do the work, but once they found out I could they would usually loosen up. It did seem like there would always be one guy who would be intimidated by a girl who could do what he thought was a man's job and would continue to annoy me. I found that if I just did the job as well (or better in some cases) as he did, the rest of the crew would realize how stupid he sounded and put a stop to his behavior without me having to really say anything. Of course, once you get to know the guys you'll know who you can "put in their place" verbally and who you can't.
I agree that in general giving it some time will help. Also that not being afraid to join in with the general office banter to let them know that they don't have the change the way they act because you're there.
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I love that, from the perspective of the hoop, the person is spinning inside it rather than the hoop spinning around the person.
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After dancing last night (in a club) I though I'd throw in my two cents. I started stripping about 15 years ago – when it was all about the stage show. I love both dancing on stage in a club and doing tricks in a dance studio.
Often no matter how many tricks/how great of a pole show I want to do in a club I can't. Many clubs have poles that are slippery, unstable or both. I have no control over the amount of lotion that other girls in the club wear (and subsequently rub all over the pole). The pole I was working with last night was slippery enough that, no matter how much I cleaned it, a cupid (for example) was out of the question. Also, this particular pole had center joint about 9 feet up that flexed somewhat scarily. As much as I wanted to play on the pole (it was dead and I was bored) it just wasn't an option.
Also, I want to second everyone here who has said that if you want to see pole tricks and you're not – ask a dancer. If I know someone is going to appreciate pole I'll go all out trying to put on a good show.
I also want to say that appreciate how open everyone at Studio Veena to hearing a dancer's point of view and that I honestly appreciate hearing the other side of things!https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif
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name: Darci
age: 33
location: Northern Minnesota
stage name: used to be Rayne
lessons or self taught: A little of both I guess. I've never taken a class at a studio – but I've definitely gotten help from others along the way!
spin or static: Spin for some moves, static for others.
shoes or barefoot: Barefoot all the way!
favorite pole move: Whatever I'm currently attempting – but haven't yet mastered. Right now it's the true grip deadlift.
day job: Stone Tile Artist, Pole Instructor, Theatre lighting tech
your best/sexiest feature: Stomach or back
how you got into pole dancing: Was a stripper for years and then wanted to keep poleing when I quit stripping.
how you found out about studioveena.com: I was trying to figure out how to do a move and came across one of Veena's videos on youtube.
if you were a pair of underwear you would be a thong, boy shorts, bikini cut, or granny panties: Boy shorts – I'm nothing if not a tomboy!
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I agree with AliciaPolerina. Try an adult ballet class. I've never taken a class that was just barre – I could see how that would get repetitive and boring quickly. But a real, full ballet class that incorporates barre and center of the floor work can be fun and challenging. I took ballet through college and the balance, flow and awareness of body placement have all been useful in pole.
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I was a stripper for 13 years.
My profession is: Stone tile artist (I run my own business) and pole instructor
My level of education: A bachelor's in Technical Theatre and just two classes away from a bachelor's in Fisheries Sciences (which I have no intention of finishing)
I started working as a dancer at about the time I started college. At the time it was definitely a money decision. I just couldn't comprehend working at some place like McDonalds for minimum wage when I could be dancing. I loved the schedule, the freedom and the feeling of being in charge of myself. Since college I have taken breaks from dancing (none longer than a few months) to stage manage a professional theatre and to work in the backcountry of Idaho doing fish sampling. I used dancing for the past couple of years to support myself and my husband while he went back to school and I started a business. This year is the first year since I turned 18 that I haven't danced at all. And it's a little wierd.
Overall I feel like stripping was the best job I possibly could have had. Many, many, many of the things I learned from dancing have translated directly to running my own business. Before starting my business I allready knew how to navigate government's web of paperwork for doing things like getting a business licence, becoming a sole proprietor, filling out tax forms (because yes, those of us who dance full time do have to pay taxes on it). I also learned a lot of less concrete things dancing that have translated directly to my profession. Things like how to make myself work when I don't want to – because I'm not getting paid by the hour. Or how to deal with the fluctuations in income that happen naturally when what you make depends on the whims of other people. Or how to deal with rejection of what I'm selling without taking it as rejection of my self.
And like megan12 said – it's fun. I've met a lot of amazing people and had amazing experiences that I never would have gotten to have without dancing. I honestly might go back to dancing just a couple of weekends a year – just for the fun of it.
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I kind of have the opposite problem. As a teacher I love dancing fast and hard – but many of my students want the "slow sexy" style. So I get to work with a style that is not "me". It's often challenging, but it has definitely forced me to be a more versitile dancer.
Something that I do in these situations is we coreograph to a song that has dramatic tempo changes and a strong heavy beat. Ozzy Osbourne is one of my favorites for this. Then the dancer in me wants to work with the music and I will slow my naturally fast style down for the slower parts (usually verses) and can really go hard on the faster parts (usually the chorus). For some reason this is easier for me to do when the change is really dramatic.
Something else I've done when coreographing with someone who has a slower style than mine is to figure out what I would do and then start pulling moves out. For example, If I would do 6 moves in a given time I can pull 2 or 3 of them out, and have them hold/do the remaining 3-4 moves for longer – which slows everything down. Could you possibly do the opposite with your teacher? Take what she's giving you and add moves in? That should speed everything up.
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That was an interesting article. I'm bipolar, as is my best friend and several other friends from college. I also have a bipolar cousin (it tends to run in famlies) and every one of us is highly creative. I'm an aritist and a dancer. My best friend is a writer, illustrator and lighting designer. My cousin (when she's well enough to work) is a graphic designer. The other friends run the gamut from costume designer to interior decorator.
In my own personal experience I find that being bipolar can be extreamly helpful in much the manner that they illustrated in the article. For example: right now I'm working on a giant comissioned project with my art. It's the largest piece I've ever tackled by a factor of 10 and has a much tighter deadline than was really reasonable for me to take on. Reasonably it's a four month project and I'm having to have it done in a month and a half from inital design to install. I've found (I started figuring this out in college) that, when faced with this sort of thing, I can make myself manic and work much longer hours and much more intensely than I could if I wasn't manic. Working several days straight isn't out of the question.
However the article didn't mention that there are mental and emotional repercussions for doing this sort of thing. If I'm not paying attention when I come down off the manic "high" of doing this project I will be much more prone to slipping into a severe depression. I know this now and can do things to aviod it – but it took quite a while to figure out.
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I'm going to give it a try! I have my left side split and I'm getting close on my right. My center split sucks though – so that may be a long shot. But maybe….
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Well, I know this is probably fairly unhelpful – but it depends on what the boots are made of and how tall they are. I used to wear boots quite a bit, and have worn several different types so here's my two cents.
The plastic-ey looking ones (often marketed as "streatch patent") grip fairly strongly. They're made of the same (or a very similar) material as the gloves. I used to wear those when I was learning a new leg hold and wanted as much grip as possible. The grip of leather boots varies slightly depending on the quality of the leather – but in general I found it to be the closest of the grip of my natural legs. Maybe slightly less grippy. The ones that are made of some lycra like material have virtually no grip. It's like wearing slippery socks with platforms attached.
Obviously, the taller the boot – the more you're dealing with it contacting the pole. I, personally found quite a bit of difference between the amount of contact provided by a thigh high and the amount you get from a knee high (really made me aware of where my knees were in moves like the catapillar).
Other things that I've run into: The boots covered in glitter also fall into the slippery socks with platforms attached catagory. The tighter the boot is all the way up you leg the less you're going to have times where the boot grips (or slides) and your leg moves around inside it causing your body to do something unexpected. With boots that lace up the front back and sides – I've never had a problem with the grommets (or eyelets or whatever the laces go though) scratching the pole or sliding on the pole but they have left a really interesting imprint in my leg after doing a lot of leg holds.
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Have you checked out stripperweb.com ? It has reviews on clubs by dancers – which include things like how the management is, how much contact is expected during a dance, how much money the dancers usually make, and how the house dancers are to work with. It also has a forum for dancers to chat, ask questions etc. I look up every club on there before I go and I’ve found the
reviews to be quite accurate. -
That was incredible!
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I started 14 years ago. I needed money for college and had a friend who was an exotic dancer. It took me about two days of watching the money she brought home to decide that was a better way of paying for college than working at McDonalds. I was terrified! My first night, while wating for my first turn on stage, I carefully watched what the other girls were doing – hoping that I could get some idea of what to do up there. One of the girls was an amazing pole dancer. She just seemed to defy gravity as she floated around the pole. I immediately decided that I wanted to do that.
So when my turn came the first thing I did was grab the pole and fling myself around it. Hard. Oooops. No one had bothered to mention to me that it was a spinning pole. It was all I could do to hang on. As I was flying around the pole at warp speed I quickly realized that another thing no one had bothered to mention was that, if you're going to spin around a pole rapidly, shoes with ankle straps might be a good idea. Mine did not have ankle straps.
My shoe went flying across the (very busy) bar and cleared most of a table of drinks. Once I finally got the pole stopped I got to gimp across the bar on one (6" platform) shoe and ask the men at the table for my shoe back. I was mortified – and hooked. I knew I had to get on that pole again. And I don't think I've gone a week without being on a pole since.
I think that for a long time, before pole became a mainstream fitness activity, I danced in clubs as much to have a pole to play on as for the money. Now I have two poles at my house and I'm teaching at a studio. I can't pass a park without trying to flip upside down on some random piece of playground equipment. I love that, no matter how long I've been doing this, there's no way I can ever learn everything. There's always someone creating a new move or a new combo that I just have to try!
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Wow! I can't believe I've never really heard of her! That was awesome!
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This is a completely different idea, but sometimes I have students with the same problem and I have them practice falling. I know this might sound crazy, but for your whole life, falling has been someingthing completely out of your control that is going to hurt. Sometimes a big part of it is retraining your brain to realize that falling can be something you're completely in control of that is fun! And sometimes it's easier to work on the falling part first before you try to add remembering how to do a spin at the same time.
If you have a little time where you can get at your home pole, surround it with really cushy pillows (sofa cushions work well). Then just practice grabbing ahold of the pole at about eye level and hanging on while you slide down onto your knees. Play around with that. Just get used to the pole. See what happens when your squeeze harder or less hard with your hands. Basically you're teaching your body that even when you're falling it's ok.
Hopefully this helps a little.
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It looks really cool – but I'm in the same boat as Stevesgirl. I don't know some of the terminolgy and therefore couldn't do some of the exercises either. Would it be possible to have a space on the site where you have links to videos or even just a written description of each exercise?
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Thanks all!!!! I will definitely include an instructor bio. And I like the idea of making it not too serious because I'm definitely a little goofy!https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif
Since the studio is pretty new (and I just kind of fell into teaching at it – but that's a long story) we don't have much in the news about our studio specifically – but I can maybe find some more general news articles about pole to link to. And we are going to be at our area's Women's Expo this fall – I didn't even think of adding that – but now I will!
As far as the photo gallery – do you mean just a photo or two or a video of moves you'll learn in each class? Because I don't think I could begin to do anything as extensive as the awesome photo gallery that Veena has put together here. I'm really kind of struggling with what pictures to have. I have a general shot of the studio with the poles and I have pics of me on the pole – but that's about it. And I feel like that's kinda boring. I could maybe get a few students to let me put their pics up on the web but so many of them are local professionals in various fields and, because this is a fairly conservative area most of them are afraid of being super open about the fact that they take pole classes. So I'm just not sure what to do about pics.
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This is an awesome thread. It's very cool to see everyone sharing not only their stories of mental illness – but also their solutions. And even cooler that those solutions aren't always medication. I feel like in our society too often the emphasis is on letting someone else (usually doctors and their medication) fix us, and then blaming them if we don't get better, rather than taking control of our own lives.
Although almost no one can tell now, I have very severe rapid cycling bipolar disorder. Like poletrickster said, it means that your moods not only fluctuate wildly from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other, they also do it very rapidly. So rapidly, in fact, that I would loose track of where I was and who the people around me were. I went to doctor after doctor and they prescribed every medication under the sun. I took them – and when I didn't get better it was the doctor's fault because he prescribed the wrong medication or "just didn't get it." I lost friends because of the horrible things I would do when I was flipping out and then tell them "you can't blame me for that – it was the disease." This went on for years.
Then I ended up working in a remote part of Idaho, backpacking into the mountains to count fish. Not a situation that makes taking medication (or remembering to take medication) easy. And I ended up with a boyfriend I reeeeeeealllly liked (now my husband) who wasn't having any of the "you can't blame me for that – it was the disease" crap. And this was somewhere that it wasn't easy to obtain heavily processed food. So, all of a sudden there I was, excersizing a lot, eating really well and not being able to make excuses for myself. It was ROUGH at first – but slowly I got better. Really better, not the temporary better and then crash of medication.
I know this is supposed to be about pole and mental illness – but honestly, although I pole danced throughout all of it, pole wasn't what made me better. Pole is, however a major part of manintaining my sanity. As other people have said, working out seems to make things better. Sometimes I feel as though I get through by exhausting the mania. If I'm having a bad day I just dance longer and harder and, when I get to the point that I can't dance anymore I always feel better.
Teaching pole has also helped bunches. Now I'm responsible to my students as well. I can't allow myself to have mood swings while teaching and seeing someone "get" something for the first time is always going to put me in an awesome mood!
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I learned the split grip ayesha a year ago and am just now trying to get the forearm grip and elbow grip. If you have a strong extended butterfly you might find the split grip ayesha to be quite manageable.
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I think there's nothing wrong with learning from videos – as long as you're willing to hold yourself back from doing moves you're not strong enough to do yet. As an instructor I sort of cringe when new students come into my classes and tell me they're experienced because they watch videos on you tube. Occasionally they're awesome – but usally it means that they can manage to momentum into a trick without propper form or strength.
The one exception to that is Veena's lessons!! I reccomend them to all of my students. Even if they don't have a pole at home the stretching, conditioning and foam roller exercises are awesome!
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I don't know how this would work because I've not tried it – but it's an idea to work with at least. Could you get a package of the laminate flooring that clicks together (the kind they sell at Home Depot or Menards or Lowes) and basically build a little wood "floor" that floats over your rug? Most of that stuff has a foam backer that would keep it from slipping on the rug (I think). Again, I don't know exactly how it would work – but it's maybe a thought…
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For me one of the keys to being able to just relax and let things flow without thinking about them is the the music. I try to freestyle to songs I know really, really well. Like "sings all the words loudly along with the song" well (maybe this is why my husband doesn't want to be in the house when I'm practicing? https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif) I find that when I know the music so well that I allready know where the heavy beats, or pauses, or tempo changes are going to happen without thinking about them I don't have those "wait – what move goes here" moments as much.
This is probably a result of pole dancing in clubs for years before I started in a studio. In a club you can't plan anything because you have to be reacting to your surroundings all the time – so you're pretty much always freestyling. And sometimes you get to pick what you want to dance to – or sometimes the DJ does it for you and you don't know what you're going to hear till the song starts. I found I was waaaaaay better and things appeared more "choreographed" when I picked the music .
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Thanks for the link! She is amazing!!
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That's amazing! Are there any longer videos of her? I would love to see more!
