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For citation, please refer to: The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 2 No. 3,
2013: pp. 381-396.
The Future of Pole Dance
Joshua Paul Dale
Tokyo Gakugei University
Abstract
From its genesis over two decades ago in North American exotic dance clubs, pole dance
has consciously shed its striptease origins to become a global phenomenon. This article takes Japan
as a case study to explain the evolution of pole dance as both a competitive sport and as a
performance art, then proposes that Japanese pole dancers are leading the way in the latter category.
The analysis is driven by the author’s personal experience as a pole dancer in Japan: an experience
ineluctably marked by gender and ethnicity. As a Caucasian male, the author stands apart from
Japanese pole dancers; yet, this difference also enables him to stand in for the non-Japanese
audience most likely to view the new performances in Japan through the lens of “Oriental”
fetishism. This article takes the fetishization of Asian women as the measure of unethical behavior,
not only for the author’s own position as a practitioner, but also for the international reception of
Japanese pole dance.
However, the psychoanalytic concept of fetishism, reformulated and depathologized in
recent queer theory, also yields insights into how pole dancers across the world have developed the
new pole dance around a shared, embodied experience. This article employs queer theory on
fetishistic desire to explore how Japanese pole dancers are developing new expressions of this
shared experience when they come together in troupes and ensembles to create highly theatrical
performances with wide ranging influences: some Western, some uniquely Japanese. The article
concludes by proposing that, while these new developments in Japan may well herald the future of
pole dance on the global stage, the specter of “Oriental” fetishism looms over the international
reception of Japanese pole dancers’ new productions.
Introduction
From its origins over two decades ago in exotic dance clubs, pole dance has consciously
shed its striptease origins to become a global phenomenon. Hundreds of studios have opened in
over fifty countries in the last decade, attracting thousands of devoted students (Holland 2010: 5).
The first World Championship, held in Amsterdam in 2005, signaled the establishment of an
international community of pole dancers that increasingly reaches out to a wider public. Today,
pole dancers interact not only at dance studios, but also through online social networking sites,
where they share innovations and insights along with photos and YouTube videos. In this article, I
trace the evolution of pole dance from an ‘exotic dance’ performed in strip clubs, to its current,
most popular, iteration as a fitness activity and sport: since 2005, competitions, both regional and
international, have been increasing in size and number. However, I also analyze another, growing
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feature of the world of pole dance: namely, performances staged in non-strip club venues that
present pole dance as a new genre of aerial dance. In Japan, now a leader in this scene, showcase
events featuring ensembles of dancers are held at not only nightclubs, but ‘legitimate’ theaters as
well.
The ensemble showcases currently developing in Japan are not yet well known outside that
country: yet, as awareness broadens, the sheer spectacle of dozens of scantily-clad dancers posing
and spinning in midair, in costumes ranging from cut-down ‘show kimono,’ to gothic/lolita, to
shiny, anime-like vinyl, are destined to run headlong into orientalist stereotypes. To address this
issue directly, I first locate and account for my own position in the Japanese pole dance scene as a
Caucasian, male dancer by addressing the problematic that would seem to the most pertinent to the
Western reception of Japanese pole dance: namely, the orientalist tendency to fetishize Asian
subjects (particularly women). Yet, when considered in the light of recent queer theory, fetishism
also emerges as a key component of a new theory of desire that, when decoupled from the racial
fetishism that robs the other of agency, may shed light on the particular, collective passion that
motivates all pole dancers and is instrumental in the formation and endurance of the global pole
dance community. The assertion that all pole dance is fundamentally performative leads to my
argument that new developments in Japan may herald the future of pole dance around the world.
A Doubled Otherness
I assert that the new pole dance was developed not only by, but also for, women. At the
beginning of the pole dance boom, dancers trained in women-only studios in a regime designed for
female physiology: for example, intermediate moves stress core strength, while upper body strength
is reserved for advanced moves. When pole dancers began to perform and/or compete outside the
studio, they did so in a way consciously designed to foil a straight male gaze that sought to preserve
pole dance as a form of striptease in fantasy, if not reality: for example, the practice of tipping
dancers, a holdover from the strip club days, began to disappear as routines were choreographed, set
to music, and performed in costume on raised stages or platforms.
As a male pole dancer, my very presence in a studio makes a women-only environment
impossible, while the training regime created other challenges.i Though my presence on stage may
work to foil the straight male gaze outlined above, my participation in this world created by women
calls for an analysis of my own fantasy position, not merely that of the audience. A further problem
arises from the fact that I train and perform primarily in Tokyo, where my gendered otherness is
doubled by my Caucasian American ethnicity.ii For these reasons, a theory of my own practice is
called for before I continue with my analysis of the pole dance community as a whole.
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Here is a brief account of how I became a pole dancer: for the last fifteen years, I have been
performing in Tokyo’s underground club scene, at queer-friendly venues such as fetish parties. My
shows were influenced by the slow, grotesque contortions of the body that characterize the Japanese
avant-garde dance form butoh, which I had previously studied. In 2006, I began sharing a stage with
pole dancers, several of whom became friends. When they told me their teacher, Reiko Suemune,
was opening a dance studio, and was planning a class for male students. I signed up, started training
three times a week, and eventually began performing. Now, I perform pole dance regularly, both at
the same sort of underground events as before, and at events organized within the pole dance
community.
From my point of view, there was a natural, conscious progression to my becoming a pole
dancer. Yet, a fundamental discovery of psychoanalysis was the fact that, though people feel desire
consciously, it originates in the unconscious. Five years after I began pole dancing, there are still
only a handful of male students at my studio. I train and perform surrounded by women, and fully
accounting for my presence demands an investigation of my unconscious desire and how it causes
me to act towards others.iii As I see it, the fact that desire proceeds from the unconscious, making
who or what we desire feel out of our control, does not negate our obligation to take responsibility
for our desire. As a male pole dancer, training in what (frequently) would be a women-only space
but for my presence, I first have an obligation to minimize any discomfort that presence might
cause to others. At the studio, I try through words and actions to make it clear I am there to dance,
not to look. If I don’t know the other dancers, I don’t look at them while they are practicing.iv In
addition, I cultivate a non-disruptive presence through attention to body language, vocalization and
consciousness of the dynamics of group space.
Finally, in order to extend this obligation to preserve a non-disruptive presence in the pole
dance world into my academic practice, I have decided against conducting substantive fieldwork
interviews with pole dancers. Although such an undertaking would seem to solve the problem of a
white male speaking for Japanese pole dancers by allowing them speak for themselves, it would
create another complication by radically shifting my subject position within the pole dance world:
from participant to confidant. Formal interviews encourage “informants” to view the fieldworker as
someone to whom they may confide information that is often highly personal; and, thus, not shared
generally amongst the community.v The following section further explores this reluctance; for now,
please note that I although have interviewed studio owners and competition organizers (both
Japanese and European) in my research, the goal of this article is to analyze trends in pole dance by
focusing on what dancers express through movement. In other words, rather than interrogate pole
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dancers about their desire to dance, I read dance itself as a text in order to reveal that pole dancers,
through the new form of dance they have created, are already speaking.
The ‘Oriental’ Fetish
As a white male training and performing with Asian women, I feel an obligation to myself
and to my audience (as a dancer and an academic) to locate my own desire within the inescapable
framework of orientalism. Through an analysis of the stereotypes engendered by orientalism, I
present a theory of racial fetishism that marks the ethical limits of my pole dance practice.
Subsequently, I attempt to separate fetishism from racism to reveal how all human desire operates
in a fetishistic manner: a theory I then extend to pole dance in general. The inherent difficulty in
speaking about desire, whether one’s own or another’s, which is suggested by the insight that desire
originates in the unconscious, is a stubborn problem that I address in my attempt to theorize the
experience of pole dancers without constructing a totalizing discourse that would presume to speak
in their place.
Orientalism, as described by Edward Said in his groundbreaking work on the topic, is: a
certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate,
what is a manifestly different (or alternative and novel) world’ (Said 1979: 12).vi Said is at pains not
to deny the material reality of the cultures and peoples that have been collected under the rubric
‘oriental.’ Rather, his goal to consider the effect this imagined ‘Orient’ has had on the construction
of the European self: ‘European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against
the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self’ (Said 1979: 3). By being a white, male,
Tokyo-based pole dancer, and by choosing to speak of (if not for) pole dance in Japan as well as
elsewhere, I come to occupy the place of an underground, exotic, uncanny version of a Western
‘self.’ What does speaking from that place represent: both to my audience, and to the self (myself)
it has a role in creating?
Homi Bhabha, in The Location of Culture, reads Said to establish a structural link between
the racial stereotyping characteristic of colonial discourse and the psychoanalytic concept of
fetishism (Bhabha 1994: 74). He writes: ‘The fetish or stereotype give access to an ‘identity’ which
is predicated as much on mastery and pleasure as it is on anxiety and defense, for it is a form of
multiple and contradictory belief in its recognition of difference and disavowal of it’ (Bhabha 1994:
75). A prime example of the mixing of stereotyping and fetishizing lies in the phenomenon of the
‘oriental’ fetishist, in which a ‘Western’ man (or woman) desires an Asian woman (or man) for
their ‘Asianness’ itself: a quality that, paradoxically, seems mysterious and unknowable as it
simultaneously is defined and explained.
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In her article ‘The Yellow Fever Pages,’ Karen Eng explains that it doesn’t occur to men
who pursue her because of her Asian ethnicity that she might have an identity independent of their
stereotypes, concluding: ‘The trouble isn’t so much that men with Yellow Fever are attracted to a
physical type per se, but that they associate the type with behaviors or attitudes that may not exist in
the object of pursuit’ (Eng 2002). There is a fundamental displacement in these men’s desire for
Asian women that allows the men to hold several contradictory beliefs simultaneously. For
example, Eng writes that men who are aware of her Chinese American identity still ask her
repeatedly to wear a Japanese kimono. (Eng 2002)
Non-Asians with an ‘oriental’ fetish often profess an interest in all Asian cultures, or with
Asian culture in general, which we might expect of people who fetishize racial difference itself
(Eng 2002, Weaver 1998). Richard Fung, commenting on this fetish in the gay community, lists the
sexual stereotypes of different Asian cultures common in the West, then writes: “At the same time,
there is the cliche that ‘all Orientals look alike.’ So in this paradox of the invisibility of difference
lies the fascination” (Fung 1991: 161). Fetishism is an object relation. When trying to interact with
people, a fetishist employs stereotypes as a tactic to construct a facsimile of a whole person from a
partial (fetish) object in a way that puts the priority on continuing the fetishist’s fascination with
exotic difference: a tactic which, as Fung points out, makes individual difference invisible. Thus,
racial fetishism operates at the expense of knowing the other as a unique individual.
The Ethical Limits of Practice
In the figure of the Asian fetishist, I find the ethical limits of my own practice of pole dance.
I may confidently state that I do not consciously have such a fetish; however, I feel a further
obligation to keep unconscious (and therefore, unknown to me) aspects of my desire from affecting
relations with my fellow dancers. I do not deny feeling sexual attraction towards some Japanese
people - surely, to have lived here for fifteen years feeling no desire for anyone around me would
itself be a form of racism - but, a sexual fascination with the illusion of ‘Asianness,’ when indulged
in and extended through the practice of stereotyping ethnicity and character, is a different matter.
The Asian fetishist’s objectification of the other means that the other is allowed to speak (that is, to
assert their existence as an individual rather than a ‘type’) only insofar as she/he reflects the
fetishist’s image of his own desire back to him. In other words, the fetishized person exists only as a
reassurance that the fetishist’s desire exists, and it is this denial of the other’s subjectivity that I find
to be unethical: both in my practice, and in the desire to represent one’s own and other people’s
experience that underlies all academic study of difference.
My experience as a pole dancer does not guarantee knowledge of how women - Japanese or
otherwise - experience pole dance. My participation in the world they have created does not give
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me the right or the ability to speak for them. Since desire operates unconsciously, I cannot even
speak definitively of my own experience. I may say that avoiding Asian fetishism is an ethical
imperative in my practice because, although the origin of a fetish object is unconscious, the subject
experiences the pleasure of fetishism - and the false knowledge of racial stereotyping - at the level
of the ego. But why do I want to pole dance? Why does anyone? How may I address the latter
question while taking my difference from my fellow dancers into account?
The Evolution of Pole Dance
Pole dance originated in North American strip clubs in the late 1980s and1990s, before
spreading in the 21st century across North and South America, to the UK, Europe and Russia, to
Australia and New Zealand, as well as across Asia. Japan is particularly well represented, but there
are also studios and regular shows in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, the Phillipines and South
Korea. The trigger for this vast expansion was the brief boom, beginning around 2004, of pole
dance practiced by Hollywood stars such as Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Kate Moss, which was
covered exhaustively on daytime television and women’s magazines. Pole dance became the latest
fitness craze, and the sudden demand resulted in an explosion in the number of studios opened by
former exotic dancers turned instructors.
‘Why would a straight woman want to see another woman in fewer clothes spin around a
pole?’ asks Ariel Levy in Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. ‘Why
would she want to be on a pole herself?’ (Levy 2006: 34). Levy’s conclusion is revealed by her
book’s title: in her view, women are objectifying themselves by pole dancing. In this article, I take a
closer look at this claim and offer another answer to the question of why women (or men) would
want to be, and to be seen, ‘on a pole.’
Samantha Holland, in her groundbreaking book Pole Dancing, Empowerment and
Embodiment, refutes Levy’s accusation that pole dance exists simply to arouse men sexually by
analyzing the discourse of women’s empowerment as it circulates in the pole dance community.
(Holland 2010: 26). Holland, who conducted extensive fieldwork interviews in the UK, North
America and Australia, combined with participant-observation of pole fitness classes in the UK,
concludes that the physical benefits of pole fitness, combined with increases in self-confidence and
self-esteem, constitute a valid form of empowerment for many individual pole dancers (Holland
2010: 184).
The concept of women’s empowerment, however, is not uniformly defined or applied
throughout Asia; and, in Japan, pole dance was never promoted using this discourse. However,
Japanese pole dance studios did adopt another strategy used by the international pole dance
community in their address to the public at large: namely, the redefinition of pole dance as a fitness
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activity and competitive sport. The act of redefining pole dance was not accomplished without a
certain amount of controversy within the emerging, global pole dance community: and, as we shall
see, the idea that pole dance should be considered a new genre of performance art remains strong in
the community, especially in Japan.vii
The 2009 World Pole Dance competition illustrates the continuing desire by the organizers
to rebrand pole dance as a fitness, rather than performative, activity. Further markers of legitimacy
followed: for example, the competition’s organizing body, World Pole Sport and Fitness is now
accredited by the UK’s Fitness Industry Association and Register of Exercise Professionals. Both
this competition and the International Pole Dance Association, founder of the International Pole
Championship, also have their own accredidation programs that allow individual studios to achieve
recognition in a body of industry professionals. In addition, the efforts of competition organizers to
distance pole dance from its association with striptease and sex in the eyes of the general public
extend to issues of financial sponsorship. In interviews with Hitomi Suenume, one of the organizers
of the World Pole Dance Competition, and Ania Prezplasko, founder of the International Pole
Championship, I asked about the issue of sponsorship. Both organizers told me that they refused all
offers of sponsorship by companies whose business was related to the sex industry, a decision that
made it difficult to bear the expense of mounting international competitions. The last few years,
however, have begun to see some success in attracting non-sex industry sponsors (Suenume 20
March 2010 interview; Prezplasko 10 August 2010 interview).
These gate-keeping measures I have been describing are all designed to educate the public
about the new pole dance. In the process, they reject the old association of pole dance with
striptease in order to redefine it as a fitness activity designed to increase not only physical prowess,
but also self-confidence and self-esteem, among women. If this was all to the story, then pole
fitness would most likely be a form of exercise practiced in the closed environment of women-only
pole dance studios. Public performances would be limited to sports competitions showcasing
technical prowess, athletic strength and agility. Costumes would consist solely of practical fitness
wear and trainers. Yet, there is much more to the world of pole dance than is suggested by this
strict, fitness-based conception.
Rules vary for different competitions, but theatrical elements more common to artistic
performances than sports competitions are ubiquitous. Typically, there are two divisions at pole
dance competitions, one emphasizing fitness, and the other stressing performance.viii Since one
overall winner is chosen, even entrants in the fitness division commonly wear sequins and billowing
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silk, feathers and leather, glittery makeup and platform heels: it is apparent that competitors want to
express more than just athleticism and technical precision. Some competitions, such as Miss Pole
Dance Australia, require high heels to be worn by every contestant, and allow props if they are
approved in advance (Miss Pole Dance Australia 2012).
Thus, while competition organizers are still concerned with separating pole dance from its
striptease origins, they are also tolerant of theatrical elements not usually associated with fitness or
sporting events. To explain this position, I will leave the topic of the ‘message’ of pole dance - that
is, what people such as conference organizers and competition judges want to portray to the wider
public - and offer a more considered answer to Ariel Levy’s derisive question: ‘Why would a
women want to be on a pole herself?’
Pole Dance and Pole Fitness
As stated earlier, as a consequence of the rejection of striptease that was its founding act, the
new pole dance has split into two forms. One redefines the activity as a sport: ‘pole fitness,’ rather
than dance. The other views pole dance as a new genre of aerial dance, and keeps the name intact.
Though striptease has been eliminated from both streams, certain markers of pole dance’s history as
an erotic dance form remain.ix High heels of fifteen centimeters or more are a standard in
performances, and appear even in studio classes. Since exposed skin is necessary to provide friction
to stick to the pole, arms and legs must remain bare, making skimpy costumes the norm. Finally,
there is the persistent tendency outside the community to see the pole as a phallic symbol: a
presumption co-opted as a joke by pole dancers, as we will see.
Taken together, these elements distinguish pole dance from both other aerial arts, and
fitness/sports. They also indicate that knowledge of pole dance’s striptease origins is not repressed
in this community. According to Holland, and confirmed by my participant-observation in Japan,
pole dancers feel stripping is irrelevant to the new pole dance; and, though they feel free to talk
about it within the community, it is seldom mentioned. The topic only arises when outsiders bring it
up (Holland 2010: 82). Here is Hitomi Suemune, owner of Luxurica, speaking of her sister Reiko
Suenume, head dancer at the studio and one of the originators of the new pole dance:
Some people don’t admit that pole dance has any connection to stripping. We accept
stripping, but it’s not part of our business. Pole dancers with prior stripping experience have a
sense of showmanship. For example, when Reiko was dancing at a strip club she had to do
sexual moves, but she got something from the experience. However, it’s clear that Reiko
doesn’t want to make pole dance into another form of gymnastics. (Suenume 20 March 2010
interview)x
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Pole dance’s striptease origins are seen to stand in the way of broadening pole dance’s appeal: a
goal common to both the performance and fitness streams. The fact that pole dancers admit these
origins, rather than denying or repressing them, demonstrates that they are employing another
strategy to disassociate them from the new pole dance. Psychoanalysis terms this strategy
‘disavowal.’
Disavowal is the primary mechanism of fetishism: it describes a change in the arc of desire,
away from a knowledge that the subject knows but cannot bear (in Freud’s original example, this
was the mother’s nonexistent penis), and towards a substitute, partial object (such as a shoe).
Furthermore, it is possible to separate the way that disavowal works on desire from the action of the
stereotyping that accompanies racial fetishizing. Queer theorist Tim Dean explains this opposition
by pointing out that stereotyping works by synecdoche, taking racial difference as the whole of
difference, while fetishistic desire is always manufacturing new, multiple forms of difference to
enjoy (Dean 2009: 165).
As I demonstrate in the following section, the disavowal behind the bifurcation of pole
dance into aerial art and fitness/sport did not result in the formation of a fetish object in the classic
sense of the term. Instead, I contend that this strategy opened a new space of fetishistic desire (that
is, desire operating in a fetishistic manner, rather than fixated on a particular fetish object) into
which flowed a cascade of multiple objects: strength and flexibility for pole fitness; showmanship
and dance skills for pole performance, and many more. Next, I want to take up one of the partial,
fetishized objects that indicates the flow of desire in pole dancing, in order to demonstrate how a
disavowed connection to striptease may still influence the form. It is an object that fits well with a
discussion of fetishism: the high heel shoe, still a presence in many pole dance studios, competition
routines and virtually all artistic performances.
Pole Dancers and ‘Fetish’ Heels
When Samantha Holland started research in 2005 for her pioneering book Pole Dancing,
Empowerment and Embodiment, almost all pole dance studios were woman-only spaces. A social
scientist specializing in leisure studies, Holland stresses the evolution of pole dance into a fitness
activity, to the extent that she adopts the pole fitness neologism ‘poler’ to avoid the phrase ‘pole
dancer’ (Holland 2010)xi Yet, Holland also analyzes the performative elements that persist despite
the ongoing redefinition of the form. One of these is the presence of high heel shoes, of at least 15
cm., in many pole classes. Holland, as well as her informants, refers to them as ‘fetish shoes,’ or
‘stripper shoes.’ Most of the students she interviewed found these shoes to be painful, but many
also described them as beautiful (Holland 2010: 87).
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Importantly, Holland maintains that the overall attitude among the students towards the
shoes was one of ‘detached interest.’ She writes: ‘These shoes, novel as they were, were not about
to become an integral part of these women’s lives; the shoes were little more than objet d’art’
(Holland 2010: 87).xii High heels are not fetish objects for the students, because their desire is not
fixed on the shoes: they are not objects desired in and of themselves. Rather, the shoes function to
point desire in other directions, which vary with the individual: Holland reports that students felt the
shoes to be ‘special,’ and ‘theatrical,’ as well as ‘outrageous’ and ‘impractical’ (Holland 2010: 87).
Because the shoes open the space of desire, rather than closing it down, they are not fetish objects.
Neither, I argue, are they merely objet d’art, serving no purpose other than decoration. Rather, I
maintain they are examples of what Lacan calls the object a: that is, an object that causes desire.
According to Lacan, the object a is not an object of desire; rather, it sets desire in motion. The
object a is the foundation of an identification that supports desire, and one way it may function is
through disavowal (Lacan 1977: 186).
Pole as Object a
The phrase ‘stripper heels’ contains an original referent which, in pole dance classes, is
detached from its point of origin through the act of acknowledgment. ‘Fetish’ heels thus open a
space of performative play for pole dancers, without any real attachment to their ubiquitous
presence in strip clubs.xiii High heels orient a pole class to the outside world, while (if the studio so
chooses) retaining the security of a women-only space. They are a marker of the pleasure of being
seen that operates without requiring a subject who takes pleasure in watching: in other words,
wearing ‘fetish’ heels in a studio class give dancers the feeling of being looked at, and the security
of knowing that no one is looking at them solely as an object of visual satisfaction. By wearing the
shoes, the dancers become performers without the need for an audience, either real or imagined.
Through this process, dancers become the objects, not of a male gaze; but rather, the gaze of an
impersonal, unincarnated Other.xiv In other words, it is the generalized idea of being watched, but
not by anyone in particular, which orients the desire of the dancer outwards and makes all pole
dance a form of spectacle. It is this last point, further supported below, which allows me to make
the argument that pole dance is always a performance.
As I wrote above, not all pole classes involve high heels, so I must explain why I feel they
may stand as a general example of pole dance’s implicit address to its audience, present or absent.
To do so, I take the pole itself as my next example. The fact that a dance pole might be seen as a
phallic symbol is obvious to pole dancers, and one would expect the pole fitness group, which
eschews all connection with striptease, to have a particular antipathy to this symbolism. Yet, this is
the very group whose members now refer to themselves as ‘polers,’ and use the verb ‘to pole,’ in
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order to drop ‘dance’ from their vocabulary. They are not shy about this usage: T-shirts sold at the
2010 World Pole Sport and Fitness Championship in Zurich read: ‘I (heart) my pole,’ and
‘Addicted to Pole.’ The humor is obvious, but how to read it? (World Pole Sport Fitness 2012)
A dance pole is not a substitute for a missing penis, no matter how ardently straight men
may desire it to be so. The pole is not a fetish object for pole dancers, because, like ‘fetish shoes,’ it
is not desired in itself; rather, like the shoes, it is an object a, setting the desire of the dancer in
motion along with her body. The T-shirts’ humorous references to the pole as a love object, and
pole dance as addiction, also speak literal truths about the passion for pole dance that defines this
practice for pole dancers around the world.xv Like members of any subculture, from punk rockers to
anime fans, pole dancers take pleasure in the very thing that both makes them different from the
mainstream, and binds them together as a community. This group identity not only gives them the
strength to ignore misplaced, mainstream fantasies about them, but allows the freedom to make
knowing fun of these fantasies as well. More importantly, the means by which this passion
circulates in the pole dance community points to a reciprocal exchange that will provide an answer
to the question of why pole dancers want to dance.
Sex and Spectacle
Separating fetishism from racial stereotyping enabled me to present a theory of desire
operating fetishistically, through the object a. As objects that cause desire, high heels and dance
poles appear as remnants of pole dance’s previous incarnation that now turn outward, operating as
free-floating signifiers of multiple desires aimed towards an impersonal, unincarnated audience. In
other words, the performativity of the new pole dance now exists to stimulate the dancers’ desire,
not that of a particular, and prior, heterosexual male audience. However, a few questions still
remain. How does the passion of pole dance propagate in the community as a whole? How is
satisfaction attained in an activity that is ineluctably sexy, yet not about sex?
The benefits of the intense physical effort required to pole dance are common to dancers at
every level: all dancers experiences incremental, yet continual, increases in skill, flexibility,
strength and stamina, albeit at different rates and levels. Pole dancers celebrate this improvement
communally as well as individually; for example, the bodily thrill of mastering a trick one has spent
weeks, or months, attempting is known to all dancers, so the excitement felt when somebody else
manages it is vicariously shared and celebrated by all.
As I wrote previously, due to the need for exposed skin to stick to the pole, pole dance is an
aerial art that - barring costumes from special materials - presents a scantily clad dancer posing and
spinning in midair. Thus, I argue that the desire to be seen - to present oneself as an object of visual
pleasure - is at the heart of pole dance, even if that presentation is done only to an audience of other
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students, or appears in a YouTube video made from home. This is one reason I contend that pole
dance is always a performance, even for those who have no intention to perform in public. The
pleasure of seeing oneself as a specular object involves an internalization of the pleasure of the
viewer: thus, the feeling of being watched is always present, even if no one is actually looking. Yet,
this is only part of the picture. When I say that pole dance is always a performance, I mean that the
specularity of pole dance - the way dancers mirror each other - puts a particular energy in the air, an
electricity that all dancers may feel, that belongs to all dancers: a communally-enabled, and
experienced, satisfaction.
When a pole dancer sees a new move or variation on YouTube, and tries it in her studio the
next day, others are quick to imitate. In this fashion, innovations spread quickly around the world -
so quickly that attribution swiftly becomes impossible. Caught up in the excitement of the new, few
are concerned with who developed what. Five years after I began training, I am still learning new
spins or holds (or, more accurately, variations of known ones) almost every week. Pole dance
borrows skills from other genres such as aerial dance, circus arts, or gymnastics, but unlike these
well established forms, the limits of pole dance are not yet known. Thus, the pleasure of pole dance
does not only accrue from incremental progression along a known curve. The new pole dance exists
in a fervor of invention, and this passion for the new ensures that pole dance’s focus is always on
the coming, unknown future: even as its satisfaction lies in the ever-present now of the dance itself.
The Future of Pole Dance
In this article, I have used the concept of fetishism in two ways. The first, a theory of racial
fetishism based on a psychoanalytic interpretation of Said’s concept of orientalism, described the
ethical limits of my own practice of pole dance in a Japanese context. Sexual as well as racial
difference may become a dehumanizing fetish object under this theory: another way to understand
the rejection of striptease that characterizes the global pole dance community would be to view it as
a form of resistance to the power relation inherent to strip clubs, in which dancers are paid to
embody a particular fantasy desired by the customer.
To offer a more accurate and comprehensive account of why women, and men, want to pole
dance, I deployed a new reading of fetishism that preserves the agency of pole dancers by taking
sexualized objects, such as high heel shoes, and the dance pole itself, not as fetish objects, but as
objects a; that is, objects that cause, rather than satisfy, desire. In the classic theory of fetishism,
desire is satisfied by the fetish object in a closed loop. The new theory of desire operating in a
fetishistic manner, on the other hand, opens the space of desire, allowing it to flow in many
directions simultaneously. In Japan, pole dance is unfolding in a way that gives full flower to this
expression.
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My argument that Japan may represent the future of pole dance is speculative, but it is
assisted by the fact that Japan has already come further than other countries in terms of acceptance,
by the general public, that the new pole dance is something separate from striptease. According to
Hitomi Suenume when I interviewed her in 2010:
But, a good point is how in the last two or three years, even ordinary middle-aged men will
say: ‘Oh, I’ve heard of pole dance! They do fantastic tricks. It’s a dance, right?’ No one really
associates it with striptease anymore. That’s really the feeling that’s developed in the last few
years. Seven years ago people were still saying: ‘It’s striptease, right?’ But almost no one
would think that now. (Suenume 20 March 2010 interview)
I view pole dance as a participatory performance community, a subculture that extends from the
studio to the stage. In Japan, the ability of the general public to recognize that pole dance is not
longer merely striptease marks a willingness to accept that pole dancers do not take the stage in
order to embody a particular straight, male fantasy. This in turn allowed pole dancers to escape
from the burden of denying that fantasy, and opened the form to new images, themes and practices:
in effect, it unleashed the full potential of pole dance as a powerful visual spectacle.
In Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, there are increasing opportunities for amateurs
and professional pole dancers to take to the stage outside of strip clubs. Many bars and nightclubs
have installed poles and hire dancers to perform on weekends. Students training at studios may thus
aspire to perform, and to be paid for their work, as nightclub, rather than strip club, dancers. A few
will have the opportunity to become teachers themselves. Competitions provide instant visibility for
the winners, while regular shows help individual performers to build a fan base.
What follows is a snapshot of the pole dance community in Japan, which will show how the
communal, performative nature of pole dance in the studio translates to the stage. On 3 and 4
March, 2012, the Tokyo pole dance studio Luxurica staged its annual student recital. Around eighty
dancers presented a two hour showcase of pole dance performances with varying themes, ranging
from: ‘Sexy Mario,’ a parody of the popular video game franchise; to ‘Invader Must Die,’ an
anime-like scenario of a war in outer space; to ‘Klimt and Mucha: Sensual Women,’ based on
works by the two artists; to ‘Tinkerbell World’ (fairies and feathers).xvi (Suenume 17 September
2011) This was the third year the recital was held, and the first time it took place in a theater rather
than a nightclub. The custom built stage included three poles, accommodating ensembles of up to
ten dancers per show. In such a long program using the same apparatus, one of the challenges for
the choreographers was to keep the attention of the audience: a task made more difficult because,
inevitably, the same spins and tricks were repeated in different shows. In a nightclub, spectators are
free to drink, dance, gossip and move around: this is a very different experience than that offered to
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a theater audience held captive in their seats. The teachers who choreographed the program
addressed this issue by elaborating and intensifying the techniques they had learned in the previous
two years: shows differed by dance techniques, from jazz, to hip hop to ballet; theme, as I indicated
above; and, finally, costume, which I address below.
In addition to their own recitals, Japanese pole dance studios also collaborate to stage
showcase events in nightclubs. For example, ‘Pink! The Pole Dance Night,’ occurs three times a
year. The event features the four member ensemble ‘Pink Force,’ a mixed gender group that has
been performing since 2006, and the Cyberjapan Dancers, an ensemble, all women dance group that
switched from gogo dance to pole dance around the same time.xvii On 24 March, 2012, the lineup at
‘Pink! The Pole Dance Night’ included forty-four dancers representing eight pole dance studios
from around Japan.xviii Performances, which began at 23:00 and continued until around 3:30 (with
D.J. breaks in between) ranged from solo acts to ensembles of up to six dancers. Themes were
varied: from parodies of the well-loved anime Doraemon, to combinations of traditional Japanese
festival dance and martial arts.
Advanced students often join teachers in these shows, and many of the solo performers, as
well as members of the Cyberjapan Dancers, are professional dancers who appear regularly in
different nightclubs. As I wrote previously, many nightclubs have hired pole dancers to perform
every weekend. The increasing number of venues and events looking for pole dancers create
opportunities for amateurs and professionals alike. A continually moving ladder of performance
animates the world of pole dance, with teachers near the top. Above the teachers in this hierarchy,
however, are the competition winners. For example, at ‘Pink!,’ the event I mentioned above, Jenyne
Butterfly appeared as the special guest performer. Based in Las Vegas, Jenyne won the inaugural
US Pole Dance Federation Championship in 2008, and placed second at the World Pole Sport and
Fitness Championship in 2009. Jenyne came to Hong Kong to judge the International Pole
Competition, then continued on to Tokyo not only to perform, but also to give workshops at various
pole dance studios. The last several years has seen an increase in the number of well-known pole
dancers traveling to exhibit and teach their skills. Winning a competition is thus a step up the ladder
to building what could become an international reputation within the pole dance community.xix
Costume and Community
In the classic definition, a fetish object is something that provides complete sexual
satisfaction to the fetishist. If the object is another human being, ethical problems abound.
However, in the alternative theory of fetishism I presented above, the disavowal that is the primary
mechanism of fetishism serves to open desire outwards, towards multiple objects. These objects -
high heels, dance poles and (as I detail below), costumes - are not desired in themselves. Rather
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they serve as objects a: that is, objects that set desire in motion. Pole dancers are bound together
through the shared devotion to objects that project desire outwards, rather than inwards. This
creates a performative community that is fundamentally orientated towards the outside world on
multiple levels.xx I will conclude by considering costuming: a key element of pole dance shows in
Japan, which illustrates the operation of an object a that binds individual dancers into a community.
Before I began pole dancing, when several dancers appeared at an event, they performed as
soloists, and this is still the standard practice outside Japan. I remember, however, that even in these
shows, whenever possible the dancers on the program would coordinate their costumes beforehand.
Even as soloists, dancers whose costumes complemented, rather than clashed, were able to heighten
the overall impact of their shows. Now, as ensemble performances continue to grow, the need for
bespoke pole dance costumes is increasing as well. The pole dance community in Japan is now
served by several designers who know the particular requirements of a costume for pole dance. The
way that costume-making and wearing has developed in the pole dance community may serve as an
illustration of the way that community bonds develop and are expressed, as well as how individual
expression comes into play.
The head costume designer for the Luxurica recital, Hirosumi, has been designing pole
dance costumes for almost ten years, working within the limitations I described above (that is, the
need for exposed skin to stick to the pole) to accentuate the spectacle of the body spinning and
posing in midair. When students signed up for the recital, we were given short descriptions of
costumes along with the theme, music and footgear - high heels, high-heeled boots, or barefoot - for
each show. (Suenume 17 September 2011) Each student paid more for their custom tailored
costume than they did to participate in the recital - and the latter fee included over five months of
rehearsal time.
The design of the costumes was not merely dictated by Hirosumi and the teachers who
choreographed each show. The students had input as well; for example, on how much skin they felt
comfortable exposing. The team of students that comprised each show also collectively made
decisions about hair and makeup; though, within the general look that was decided by consensus,
each performer was able to express her individual style. Between the dress rehearsals and the
performance days, I noticed subtle changes appearing in hair and makeup that would be invisible to
a theater audience beyond the first few rows of seats. These individual tweaks to the collective look
of each team became visible, however, in another setting: the photographs taken off-stage.
Photographs taken backstage, and those taken together with the audience after the showcase,
extend the world of the performances beyond the strictly choreographed world of the stage. Dancers
from different shows appear together in these photos, in which the freedom to change one’s pose
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and facial expression is combined with the individual’s choices in hair and makeup to create
opportunities for self-expression that are circulated after the event in the form of photographs and
comments posted to SNS sites such as Facebook, as well as on performers’, and teachers’, blogs. In
the case of a student recital, the initial explosion of Facebook albums and posts is followed by two
more waves of shareable material: the official still photographs of the performances, released a few
months later, and the official videos of the shows, which appear a few months after that posted on
YouTube.
When analyzing my own position in the Japanese pole dance community, I mentioned a
doubled otherness, caused by my ethnicity and gender, which not only complicates my position as a
participant and observer of this scene, but also comprises an uncanny presence that disturbs the
orientalist will to know or understand the other as fundamentally exotic and different to the Western
“self”. As images and video of Japan’s ensemble shows spreads beyond the pole dance community,
there Japanese pole dancers will also be subjected to a doubled otherness: first, as pole dancers, still
viewed as complicit in their own objectification as sexual objects by a public unwilling to give up
this fantasy; and second, as Asian women, subject to orientalist stereotypes that place them in the
position of fetish objects.
Previously, I discussed the importance of SNS to the evolution of the new pole dance: now,
with pole dancers increasingly “friending” each other across national borders - a phenomenon
catalyzed by the waves of new Facebook friending that follow the workshops taught by visiting,
high-profile teachers that I described above - news of the spectacle of Japan’s ensemble shows is
beginning to spread throughout the global pole dance community. Pole dancers, who know in their
own bodies the feeling of being “on a pole,” have formed their global community around an
affective affinity: a shared, embodied experience that offers a path towards accepting difference
without objectifying the other as an object of fantasy. Outlining a battle before it starts is
necessarily speculative; however, I believe that this community offers the best line of defense
against the objectification and fetishization of Japanese pole dancers that - inevitably - will
accompany a Western audience’s discovery of these spectacular performances.
References
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Clifford, James and Marcus, George, Eds. (1986), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Copjec, Joan (2002), Imagine There’s No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation, Boston: MIT Press.
Dean, Tim (2009), Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking, Chicago:
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Hart, Lynda (1998), Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Holland, Samantha (2010), Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment, Hampshire: Palgrave
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Järvinen, Hannah (2009), ‘Kinaesthesia, Proprioception and Past Corporeal Knowledge,’ Inside
Knowledge: (Un)Doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities, In eds. Carolyn Birdsall, Maria
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209-226.
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Sheridan, New York: WW Norton and Co.
Levy, Ariel (2006), Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, New York:
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Miss Pole Dance Australia (2012), http://www.misspoledanceaustralia.com.au/images/app-
rules.pdf. Accessed 31 March, 2012.
Said, Edward W. (1979), Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books.
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Accessed 31 March, 2012.
Suenume, Hitomi (2010) Interviewed and translated by author, 24 February, 2010.
Prezplasko, Ania (2010) Interviewed by author 10 August, 2010.
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World Pole Sport and Fitness (2012) http://www.worldpoledance.com/ Accessed 13 September
2011.
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i Upper body strength was an advantage, but there were drawbacks as well. Men tend to sweat more than
women. In pole dance, if you sweat, you slip, and if you slip, you fall. As in any aerial dance, the learning
process is accompanied by pain and fear (of falling), both of which increase sweating.
iiHowever, I should point out that pole dance in Japan is not monolithic: there are dancers of mixed Asian
and Eurasian heritage, as well as women of other ethnicities.
iiiThis is particularly necessary since I don’t have a gay identity, which means I (at times) desire (particular)
women.
iv Now, I know almost everybody, but for the first six months, I spent a lot of time looking at the floor, since
the walls are covered with mirrors.
v The extensive literature that explores this dilemma includes James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture:
Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art and Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography.
vi Italics in original.
vii
In this article, I stick with the term: ‘pole dance,’ in recognition of the performative elements which, I
contend, persist in all forms of this activity.
viii
The International Pole Championship terms these divisions ‘Pole Fit’ and ‘Pole Art,’ with the top contestant
winning the title ‘Ultimate Champion.’ http://polechampionvideo.com/information
ix However, there is crossover between neo-burlesque and pole dance, so striptease does take place outside
of strip clubs.
x Interview conducted on Feb. 24, 2010 (my translation).
xi More on this neologism below.
xii Italics in original.
xiii For a brilliant analysis of how an object may become a floating signifier detached from its original referent,
see Lynda Hart’s discussion of the use of the strap-on dildo in the lesbian community (Hart 1998: 95-99,
123).
xiv In Lacanian theory, the capitalized Other represents the big Other; that is, the symbolic order itself, rather
then other human beings. For theories that read all sexual desire as fundamentally impersonal (that is, all
desire as belonging to the Other), see Copjec (2002), Bersani (2008) and Dean (2009).
xv Words such as ‘addicting,’ ‘liberating,’ and ‘fun,’ appeared countless times in Holland’s research (Holland
2010: 72-77), and appear widely on pole dance websites.
xvi I participated in ‘Invader Must Die’ with nine other dancers. Titles and descriptions translated by the
author.
xvii Pink Force is headed by Reiko Suenume: members PiPPi and IG are teachers at her studio, Luxurica.
Hirosumi, the costume designer, is the fourth member. Reiko also trains the Cyberjapan Dancers in pole
dance, and choreographs their shows.
xviii Participating studios included Luxurica, P.L.D. (Pole Love Drug), Japan Pole Dance, Polish Studio,
Tsubasa Kichi (Wing Base), Nagoya Pole Dance, Sweetpi-A and Tokyo Leggings (translations by the
author).
xix ‘Pink!’ is not the only showcase event, and nightclubs are not the only venue for seeing pole dance. Cay
Izumi’s group Tokyo Dolores stages shows with up to a dozen performers in theater spaces, and traveled to
Italy for a show at the Lucca Comics and Games convention in 2011. Finally, the all-Japan pole dance
competition, the winners of which proceed to the ‘World Pole Sport and Fitness’ championship mentioned
earlier, was held May 12, 2012 at a theater in Tokyo.
xx The fetishist’s obsessive focus on a fetish object, on the other hand, is fundamentally indifferent to the
outside world.
