Image by Eric Nopanen/Unsplash
By Marta Aiello
“For me, art is the most important tool of expression.” This is how Melania Zoda’s story starts, narrating a tale about a sport that unexpectedly changed her life.
Zoda, aka XeniaBlack, 36, is a professional pole dancer who turned a simple hobby into a full-time job and her biggest passion.
Pole dancing is a sport with ancient origins, combining the world of gymnastics with the world of dance. Apparently easy, but practically tough: pole dancing requires strength, flexibility, endurance, and stamina, and last, but not least, a lot of patience.
It takes time to the skin to get used to the painful friction to metal, and, considering that the body needs to hold its own weight on a pole, a person can take months before seeing concrete progressions.
As little skin as possible
Pole dancing requires clothing consisting of sportswear, usually tops and panties. These garments aim to cover as little skin as possible, because to obtain “combos” – artistic forms with the body – it is necessary that the skin adheres and grip firmly to the pole. This would not be possible with longer clothes, simply because the skin would slide off the metal modern poles are made of.
“I started pole dancing nine years ago, after watching a video of a performer who combined tango with pole dancing. It was love at first sight, and I immediately though that I had to try it!” says Soda.
“I started in Berlin, where I used to live. There were different schools already, but pole dancing was not as common as all the other sports we used to watch on TV, for example.”
Melania Zoda in the pole dancing studio. @xxeniablack on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/xxeniablackk/
International sport
Nowadays, pole dancing is an international sport that counts many professionals all over the world, and in 2017 the Olympic Committee recognised it as a sport. In all the major cities there is at least one pole dancing school, and it has become popular virtually worldwide; pretty much everybody knows about its existence or at least has heard about it. Nevertheless, those who practice this sport, professionals and non-professional, experience prejudice.
“When I started pole dancing, my parents had loads of prejudices about this sport and they did not understand why I was almost naked, dancing on a pole. I remember that once, they said to me: ‘why are you denigrating yourself?'” says Zoda.
“Both my mother and my dad are doctors, they come from Sicily, and you know, in southern Italy many people still have a very closed mentality. They are confused about this discipline maybe because it reminds them of lap dance. When I say that I am a pole dance teacher and performer, the first reaction is: oh, you are a lap dancer!”
A questionnaire filled by fifteen professional and non-professional pole dancers shows that more than the half of them felt discriminated or/and judged by their family or friends because of the sport they practice.
But… why?
“They simply don’t know what the pole dancing discipline is. Lap dancing is very different: the pole is only used as an accessory, on which people walk and dance around.
“When lap dancing, you don’t even use 1/10 of the strength needed in pole dancing, and there is nothing about athleticism in that. The pole is an instrument used in different sports, for example, in the Chinese pole dance, or ‘Mallakhamb’, the Indian one. It’s all about being informed,” she says.
Body is exposed
It is obvious that, the lack of information has led this sport to be sexualised, sometimes insulted, and viewed in a negative way. According to different pole dancers, people have different – and often negative – opinions about this sport, mostly correlated to the fact that the body is exposed.
We could definitely summarise this answer in a keyword: sexism!
“When I started performing as a professional in competitions, people around me still did not have an image of me as the athlete I was, and they still did not understand what I was doing and why,2 says Zoda.
“So one day I decided to film myself while pole dancing and posted this video on social media. I purposely wore sticky trousers, which helped the grip of my body with the pole, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and even a hat. There was no exposed centimetre of my body that day.
“I immediately received a lot of comments from family and friends. They were shocked about my talent and what my body could do. They gave me the best compliments and I thought ‘so? It’s all about having my skin covered now?’“.
Andrea Zampieri, 28, has been pole dancing for five years, but only as a hobby. “The basic matter is that is often confused with or associated with lap dancing, which is mostly practiced in nightclubs, and sometimes people dance naked there,” she says.
“I really want to make sure that, by this, I do not intend to discredit lap dancing. I consider it a discipline as worth of respect as any other job, because yes, it is normally a job. Trying to explain what pole dancing is to family or friends, several times I had the perception that the technical and artistic value of this discipline is diminished and refer to a frivolous and undemanding sport, made only to show one’s body and move simply in a sensual way to attract attention.
“I want to stress the point and underline that there is nothing in bad about this, but it is a bit annoying, considering how many hours you train to get solid foundations and the evolutions of these that come with so much effort and dedication! It cannot be only that!”
Andrea, practising her favorite hobby: pole dance! @dueandrea on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dueandrea/
According to a recent poll with the most popular pole dancing group on Facebook, “pole junkies”, counting 62.786 members, 40 percent of them have experienced a form of harassment during an exhibition/performance.
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