Pole Antics
It's been featured everywhere from Oprah and iVillage.com to the BBC. Carmen Electra has made a DVD about it. Lindsay Lohan is studying up on it for a movie. Kate Hudson, Teri Hatcher and Lisa Rinna are all doing it. Heck, even Britney's doing it, so why shouldn't I try pole dancing classes?
Sin City has erected great monuments in honor of the pole dance and for various reasons, I've visited many of them. Despite the seediness of some gentlemen's clubs—the tiny drink glasses, the low-backed rolling chairs and that incense they all seem to pipe in—I can appreciate the art and beauty found in a good dancer's pole work. She seems to orbit the pole; she leans on it and it supports her as she twirls and spins. Some girls look as if they're about to fly away.
Bet on Vegas
Fresh out of high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Fawnia Mondey had been on her own since 15 and was working in retail. Seeking a drastic change, "without being too drastic," she adds, "I became an exotic dancer." This was 1994, just three days after her 19th birthday. Lured in by the art, the pageantry and the theater of it (Canadian strip clubs are very different from ours, she explains), Fawnia began teaching only one month after she herself started working as a dancer.
When she stopped dancing professionally in 1996, the teaching continued, as nobody else seemed to be doing so at that time. "It was an obvious choice after I quit—I decided to be there for the dancers." She coached them, gave feedback and evaluations and even helped the dancers arrange their music. "We had cassette tapes back then!" she laughs in her throaty voice. "I helped them be the best entertainer possible." She toured and taught all over Canada from 1994 to 2005, when she and her new husband Damon moved to Vegas to bring this exotic and sensual form of dance, so long taboo, to the "average woman."
Today, Fawnia Mondey-Dietrich's in-studio classes incorporate a warm-up, stretching and cool-down. In 2007, she will update her line of instructional DVDs, and she hopes to establish a West side studio to accommodate more women and more classes. Surrounded by Pilates and yoga equipment, Fawnia passes on her sexy secrets wearing dance sneakers instead of platform heels.
What's Your Price for Flight?
The Chair. The Fireman. The Speed Bump. The Madonna. By the end of week two I can do them all. Mostly. Once I find out how difficult it actually is to get off the ground even for the slightest of seconds, and once I find out how much it really hurts when you smash your bicep into that pole (anchored to the floor and ceiling) I begin to understand just what stamina and dedication it takes for a dancer to master the techniques. What makes them look so sexy and elongated makes the rest of us look like the seven dwarves, at least at first.
While I do not exactly plunk to the floor in a graceless heap as I imagine, I don't slither seductively, either. With my left hand glued to the pole, my arched-back descent to the floor is more like a sequence of stops and starts, like someone rappelling down a building. The accompanying squeaking sound is as painful as the skin of my now-raw hand. Before we continue, Fawnia, in her "Got Pole?" tank top, wipes down the chrome with Windex to get rid of the natural oils, and pats my hands down with golfer's talcum powder.
In time with "Black Velvet," Alannah Myles' ode to Elvis (how apropos for Vegas!), we eight ladies of all sizes, shapes, ages and abilities thrust our hips up to the heavens, running our hands over the lengths of our bodies before attempting a slow, cat-like crawl back to our poles. Once standing we "frisk," meaning we lean in to the pole, and run our hands all over that, too. I could get into this.
A Pole Poll
We talk little at first; it's hard to get to know your neighbor when you're wrapped up in your head wondering if any of this is looking sexy. Fawnia is a petite dynamo whose toned, athletic body would still look good even if she were folk dancing. She makes it all look so easy, this routine we are learning, but she breaks it down step by step until it really is easy. It's when we put it all back together that things sometime fall apart. I still fear taking my feet off the ground for my Fireman—the classic aerial whip around the pole—so even in week three when the moves are ingrained in my body, I still opt for the safer Chair spin which keeps at least one of my feet on the ground at all times.
The other ladies in my class make their own adjustments. There will be no right or wrong when these moves are next attempted, whether at home for a special someone or alone for a sexy workout. Alicia, a 41-year-old paralegal from Henderson, says this class is a birthday present from her husband, though I'm thinking the new hobby might just be a gift for himself as well. Alicia is fully on-board, having already purchased and installed a pole in her bedroom. "As far as my son knows," she says slyly, "it's for back exercises."
Thirty-five-year-old old Las Vegas firefighter Rebecca first heard about Fawnia's class in an ad in Fun & Fit magazine. "It's definitely athletic," she says of the moves. "I felt silly [at first], but by the second class I felt comfortable. I can bring out my sensual side more." Rebecca is also considering purchasing a pole for her home, and both ladies say they would at least like to make it through level two of the six Fawnia teaches. "It's funny ... I never used to go down the pole [at the firehouse] and now here I am!"
Scores Scores with the S Class
The S Class—not to be confused with Sheila Kelley's The S Factor series of pole-dancing workout DVDs—is Fawnia's newest addition to her schedule. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays at 1 and 7 p.m., this one-hour class is held in the Sky Lounge at Scores Las Vegas Nightclub and Cabaret. Having already experienced her four-week level one course, I can say that her Henderson studio is more for me. But bachelorette parties and girlfriends will find her Scores set-up has a lot to offer as well. For $50 per person, Fawnia can accommodate up to 15 ladies on the 8 poles, with champagne and strawberries for all.
I'm once again in my flats, sweats, and a Killers T-shirt. For this first class in the new digs, some of Scores' dancers will be standing in as bachelorettes, and they are sky-high in heels and glittery dresses. Scores does not feature a pole as part of its set up on the stages downstairs, so Brooklyn, Domino, and Sunny (Miss Albuquerque, New Mexico 1999, she says) are really excited to give it a go. "I'm next onstage," says Domino in a thick Eastern European accent as she excuses herself.
With the gobo lights strobing across my body, I feel far away from the Henderson studio. And very surprisingly authentic. Fawnia uses the session to teach us the top five moves from her level one routine, which I am very grateful to find out I remember, and then shows us how to string them together. At the conclusion of the S Class, she regards the platforms, the strobing lights, the ladies in their clingy gowns. "I'm gonna switch back to heels."
Check out
www.ExoticDanceSchool.com.