No Ugly Dance

I'm seeing more female/male duets in pole dance. The dancers all have young perfect bodies and they are filled with advanced pole moves. Beautiful work. At the same time I'm sure that the simple one I danced in was an honest blend of passion for pole dance with deep roots in the contemporary ballet pas de deux. It hasn't been easy dealing with the complications and broken friendships associated with that dance but I'm proud of it and the story we tried to put into motion.

This summer in Vail, Colorado on August 6 during the Vail International Dance Festival  Christopher Wheeldon premired the entire ballet Five Movements and Three Repeats that inspired me. I watched the tape. Wendy Whelen and Tyler Angle danced the final pas to This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight. We tried and I think partially captured the soul of everything Wendy and Tyler did and added pole dance. I hope this is my last tear over it. Every time I see a pole duet I will always be proud of our dance. Nothing will ever stain it or make into something ugly in my heart. The body never lies. Ever. Like all dance, our dance died in the moment. But it lives in my body and my soul.

Excerpts from Five Movements and Three Repeats begin at 2:11 in the YouTube link I have added. The Wheeldon pas danced by Wendy and Tyler is at the end of the clip. The whole Wheeldon ballet is an awe inspiring work. My apologizes to people who were led here by Google thinking this was about Christopher Wheeldon, Wendy or Tyler. I loved the music. I loved the choreography. I love the passion and beauty in both Wendy's and Tyler's dance. I love everything about ballet and what it brings to my soul in the pole studio.

9/1/12 Apparently you can't link to the Vail International YouTube videos. If you still want to see it search for this title:

NOW: Premieres - 2012 Vail International Dance Festival

Petals

Last night night I opened the door back into the room where my home dance pole resides and danced. Last nights Facebook status update:

It's been forever since I danced alone. Tonight the moon was shining through the window, the room was dark and I could faintly see my lines in the mirrors. I danced them all. My little shop of horrors: Trey Anastasio: Let me Lie, Seether: Broken, Widowmaker: Harsh Realm, Thomas Newman: Any Other Name, Dinah Washington/Max Richter: This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight, and Hole: Petals. I really liked the way I did arms from Fifth to Second on spin pole to Petals. "Tear the petals off of you..."

Beginnings

This afternoon someone told me that I was saying things that needed to be said in the pole world. That my writing added something special. Then I got a post on my Facebook page from a friend at Midwest and she said that my ears should be burning because she and a world class pole dancer (one of my teachers) were enjoying a conversation about me and my crazy life. Sooo... I give you my day and a beginning.
 
Today the alarm went off reminding me that I had ballet class at 9:00. I didn't shut it off and go back to sleep. I took a shower and went to class. It was tough. Picking up the pieces of broken dreams and friendships is painful. Looking in that mirror again hurt. So many memories. So much invested and lost. But every now and then I hit a line or move and I noticed how much I had grown as a dancer.

In my graduate school program you got two tries to pass your comprehensive qualifiying exam for the doctoral program. When I took my MS comps I passed first time with the second highest score in my class. The first time I took my PhD comps my overconfident ass failed. That hurt. Twenty years later and I'm still doing research. When shit goes bad we can sit on the floor, cry and quit or we can figure out what we did that caused the failure, pick our damaged butt off the floor and try to walk.

So I danced today and now I have blogged. I haven't touched a pole yet. I'm probably going to have to sit on the floor and cry a little bit before I grab it and pull myself up off the ground.

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. ~ Hugh White 

P.S. My father is Spanish and my mother is Italian. I have a temper from hell and sometimes I can be emotional. Maybe that is why I dance. Dancers show emotion. We have a story to tell.

Endings

The past week has been life changing for me. I have suffered an enormous loss.  There is no way to cut and paste a Swan Lake. Without that friendship this blog has no meaning. Sadly I am ending this blog. I can't leave an edited shell. Thank you all for reading my journey. I treasure the friendships I have made and I hope that I have shown you all a little about the magic of dance.

8/25/2012 Note: It was a huge hurtful task but I found a way to keep myself and not lose the soul my friend put in this blog. So the blog stays. Life goes on. Doors close. Doors open.

Sooner or Later

I have a good friend and scientific mentor that I reconnected with a few months ago on Facebook. As many of you know I can be a real porcupine at times. I am just as vocal about my politics as I am about dance. Today in conversation my friend mentioned that after I retire from my job as a research meteorologist I should start a blog. In response I posted the link to this blog. So if you came here from the blog of a well known research meteorologist and storm chaser this is it. You just fell down Bob Zamora's rabbit hole into the wonderland of what I do when I'm not thinking about the atmosphere. I'm a dancer, and ice hockey player.

My friend is an an awesome photographer and he can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Pink Floyd. Einstein loved to sail and play violin. Dick Feynman was one hell of a bongo player and artist. He signed his work "Ofey" because he wanted Ofey to live a life outside Quantum Electrodynamics. They tell me Kerry Emanuel is quite a pianist. I know that Fred Sanders (How I miss that man.) joked about sailing and running aground on his own beer cans. Society tends to think of scientists as these one dimensional people who wear white coats and fill chalkboards with equations. Some of us are more than that. Some of us are not. I will always be first and foremost a scientist but I have always loved art, history, and music.

I am coming in touch with a very spiritual side of my life. Not everything I want to say can be expressed in words and mathematics. I could say that I am becoming a dancer. But that would be wrong. I have always been a dancer. I just didn't know it. The older I get the more I am convinced that our muses choose us. I was born to touch the wind and I was born to dance.

The Gay Label

I'm starting to get some feedback on my writing and one of the issues that has been brought up by a straight male poler is his uneasiness with the possibility that he might be labeled gay if he actually danced rather than worked out on the pole. It seems like the ultimate insult that can be hurled at a guy on the playground is to call him gay. In my playground time the word was sissy. There are many gay pole dancers and many reasons for their being involved in pole dancing. However, that is a big subject. In this piece I am looking at one of the issues straight men face when they decide that they want to pole dance in either an artistic or erotic way.

Let's take a look at what is behind the scene when someone calls a man gay as an insult. In the simplest terms it is just a word meant to hurt. It is no different than bitch, asshat, etc. But there is a deeper meaning. It can be linked to the archaic role that women are supposed to play in our culture as submissive, receptive partners in the drama of human interaction. One of the stereotypes of the gay male is a submissive, passive, and receptive human. All the things the alpha male is not.

When a man pole dances he comes face to face with a part of himself that is sensual, emotional, and sexual. All men possess these attributes. It is just not acceptable to express them openly in our culture. Why can't men comfortably be sensual, emotional creatures out in open society? It is because we are supposed to be out hunting for food and defending the nest. That is our role. Dancing with flowing lines and grace just wasn't in the bargain God struck with Adam on creation day.

Women have fought and struggled to get past this ancient, "Me Tarzan, you Jane" nonsense and have found success. When I am sitting in the locker room before an ice hockey game putting my on my pads it is nothing out of the ordinary to see a pelvic protector being slid over a pair of lacy panties. The men and women lace up their skates and we go and play one of the ultimate macho sports. Women are evolving. Men on the other hand are playing the same old part.

What wannabe male pole dancers have to realize is that the same body that can go out and play ice hockey can also slide down the pole and stretch out on the dance floor in the slowest most sensual way, with a power and style that is not the least bit feminine. In the movie, "The Right Stuff" when they were attempting to break the sound barrier they said that the demon lived at Mach 1 (The speed of sound). A demon also lives in the male pole dancer's head. Yin and Yang don't play nice up there after years of fearing the "sissy/gay" word. The curious newbie is going to see this demon the first time he ventures away from the safety of the room where his wife or girlfriend has her pole or into a dance studio.

Empowerment for some male pole dancers just might be getting past the gay label. I know that there are a lot of guys out there on dance poles. Hell, I've seen video of Ricky Helms (Karol Helms's husband) on one of Karol's poles. I've have had pole parties at my house and I also know a few male hockey players that I have taught to invert. The art of male pole dance is developing. It will be defined by those who know all about "sticks and stones."

"I am not the first straight dancer or the last." ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

Agressive or Assertive

In my book assertive means that you are confident in who you are, what you do, and you are going to stand your ground against oppression, prejudice, and ignorance. But you are going to do this with the least amount of sweat possible. You draw a line and quietly, subtly, let people know that they can expect a fight if they cross the line. Aggressive on the other hand means taking the war to the enemy. Going on the attack. The trademark here is being vocal and in someone's face. The name George Patton and blitzkrieg comes to mind.

It is important to me to help make space for men in pole dancing. For men to get past "pole tricks/fitness" and dance we have to get beyond the empowerment word in the way that some female pole dancers use it and find our own meaning. We have to do this without being aggressive. We have to seek out the assertive women in pole dance. They are the dancers who will dance with us, laugh with us and share what they know about the dance with us. They are the dancers who will tell us that men move in angular ways on the pole, that the articulation and length of our moves make our dance sexy.

Last week I was watching the movie "Men Who Stare At Goats" with my wife. At one point in the movie Bill Django tells Lyn Cassidy that sometime in his life someone told him not to dance. Next we see a flashback where a young Lyn Cassidy is rocking out to the radio in his room and his dad walks by and tells him to stop it because he looks (expletive) queer."

I'm sure all the guys who swing on their SO's dance poles have at some point seen a fleeting glimpse of this bad spirit. It's ok. Really. If you ever get the chance to dance in front of a crowd and listen to the applause afterward you might find as I did, empowerment. It takes courage to be a guy and pole dance. And I do mean dance. No going from one trick to the other. The floor and the pole are your friends.

I danced last night with my teacher and she left the studio for a minute to greet the new Pole Dance class that was waiting outside for my lesson to end. I grabbed my Ipod and put on Eric Clapton's "I Wanna Make Love to You." I grabbed the pole and swung it just a little differently. I did it with an edge. I liked the feeling. I could make it sexy or I could make it sexual. Assertive vs Aggressive. You cannot dance and pretend to be someone else. It is going to show.

"Acting is not my language at all." ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov