While going through videos online you can’t help but run into the vids of people having pole dancing mishaps. They either slide and hurt themselves or the pole somehow collapses to an equally devastating fate. Earlier this year I had stumbled across the following video:

and I thought ‘Wow. That’s pretty interesting.’ What didn’t make into my pea sized brain was that the US Pole Dance Federation held the USPDF 2009 Championships at the Bleecker Street Theater in New York City on March 15th of this year. One of my colleagues brought the USPDF Championships to my attention and I had no idea what he was talking about.

A lot of times when people see the words ‘pole dance’ they immediately think ‘stripper’ or ‘exotic dancer’. Ok, sure, some of these ladies are dancers in men’s clubs. Others are fitness instructors. When I first heard that pole dancing was becoming a fitness phenomenon I thought ‘yeah…right’. And then you look at the competition highlights:

Holy crap. These women are amazing! For example, Miss Trixter 2009, Sarah Cretul, did things on a pole that left me a little flabberghasted. That and on the competitor’s page she lists herself as a ghost hunter 🙂

The winner of this competition went to the World Pole Dancing Championship held just this past weekend, April 25th, in Jamaica. Watching videos of this is completely mind boggling. I have several girlfriends who fitness pole dance and I’m completely in awe of it. I can’t imagine launching myself at one of those poles and wrapping my body around it like they do.

I always picture the friction from my skin causing me to stop spinning and making loud, squeaking noises. And then I would walk away with nasty friction burns.

These ladies make it seem so effortless. Look at this year’s winner, Felix (short hair) in the following vid:

It’s like a mixture of a women’s fitness competition and the acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil! Congrats to Jenyne Butterfly from the U.S. for placing second this year!