Yes, it’s pole dancing. Astounding pole dancing. And at around 3:20, if you’re not impressed with this woman’s athleticism, you’re either lying or blind.
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Just as a general note: I have every faith that people here can discuss pole dancing without lapsing into standard-issue sexism. Because you are awesome that way.
The point isn’t that can’t do this activity; the point is no one wants you to do this.
Hey, if I could, I would. And I wouldn’t care what other people thought.
This is not pole dancing. This is cover for some sorceress showing off her new anti-gravity spell.
Just sayin.
Just a hunch, but I would bet she didn’t have any trouble climbing that damned rope in gym class.
Yeah there are a couple of examples of amazing pole dancing floating around and they usually start out slow so you’re going “Eh, not bad” and then the good dancers just do something that would put me in the hospital if I tried it.
Richard Kadrey linked one from here (video down on that page, skip to the 30 second mark) – http://polechampionvideo.com/competitors/chelle-hafner and it’s similarly athletic.
Honestly, it only took me to 1:23 to be impressed.
Oh my. That is an extraordinary display of grace and motion.
Wow.
John. You did good. Thanks.
She had me at the upside-down invisible staircase walking.
This sort of pole dance would fit right in into a circus show. Aerial silk performers often perform movements similar to hers.
Holy shit.
A youngster like you could easily develop the strength to do a lot of that. Maybe not the flexibility, but certainly the strength and coordination. I’m at least 10 years older than you and several inches taller and I’m able to do an inverted straddle on a pole. I may take pole lessons after I get better at silks and lyra. Since I only started six months ago after a lifetime of being a computer geek, you should easily be able to do it.
Good core control, but she won’t win any contests for dancing :)
This is gymnastics, she could easily compete in any of the Olympics apparatus events.
Wow!
If I tried that I’d have one broken arm, two broken legs, three broken ribs, and oh yeah, a broken pole.
Holy crap.
Best Christmas Special ever!
(I wonder how long before the Olympics offers the vertical bar as an event?)
Color me amazed.
She should definitely be recruited by Cirque du Soleil. Amazing!
Those years of gymnastics lessons certainly were not wasted on her, hmm? That gave me exactly the same kind of chills as River Tam’s fight scenes in Serenity, and for the same reason. *Absolutely incredible.*
I’m guessing she’s a vegetarian who works out seven days a week, four hours at a time. Bitch, I’m jealous! Wish I had that kind of stamina/ability!
:-)
No way! That looks too good. Are you sure this was not CG enhanced?
1:57 God damn
3:25 WTF?!?!?!?
3:45 NO WAY!
She makes it look effortless and graceful and very often it with pole dancing it looks exactly as hard it is. This is an extremely talented gal!
Holy shit, drops on a *pole*? Those are terrifying to watch on silks, and at least there you have a little more hope that it’ll catch you.
If you’re looking to top bacon cat, I can think of no better way. Nobody puts Scalzi in a corner!
I think our literary mentor here should give it a try. We just need some sort of incentive he will react to, like when the group got him to visit the creationist “museum.”
JJS:
The chances of this particular flabby 42-year-old man with an arthritic hip shimmying up a dance pole with anything resembling grace and verve are so small that no amount of money will be inducement enough.
My gym buddy convinced me to try a pole dancing class at our local Crunch a few months back. It was a good workout, even though we had to close the blinds because of the assholes who would plaster themselves against the windows to lick the glass. -_- Some of the basic moves were remarkably easy to do, even for out-of-shape, almost-40 me — gravity works with you, for the most part. But doing them gracefully was another matter altogether, and took phenomenal strength, balance, and gonads of iron. Doing them so that they look effortless, the way this woman does (or this man, for another example of effortless beauty), is an Olympic-class feat.
I’ve been seeing this video all over the web for the past couple of days. Glad to see this woman getting the accolades she deserves.
Gargh, forgot to close that link tag… sorry. -_-
This is Olympic class gymnastics on the perpendicular Parallel bars (separated by 10-12ft). The only bit is that the Olympics has yet to recognize perpendicular parallel bars as a sport. Yet.
Thanks to N. K. Jemisin to the link to the male pole dancer, as it really should be a uni-sex gymnastic event.
The human animal never ceases to amaze and delight me. Every time I think I’ve seen the range of human ability, something like this shows up.
I remember trapeze artists doing similar, if simpler, things on ropes. And it does look like someone turned off the gravity. But she has that dancers’ musculature and serious command of what her body can do.
Thanks, John.
Dang. That is impressive.
Impressive, but how did you know she was Polish?
Have you ever tried to move like this? It’s impossible. I’ve learned through Crossfit that maintaining control like that is incredibly difficult. Her core strength is ridiculous. It gives me an overwhelming sense of admiration and something else.
Her control, core strength and command is amazing. The only comparable I’ve seen was at Cirque du Soleil.
When I was in my adolescence and young teens, some of the very best at my gymnastics club were working towards parallel and uneven bars activity like this, only horizontal. On the vertical? I am impressed.
As others have said, it’s world class gymnastics, at an angle one doesn’t see it done very often.
Even more impressive is that she kept it up for 2-something minutes and hadn’t had to build up the classic inverted-pyramid body shape to have that much upper body strength. You can tell the gymnastics rings/parallel bars experts – they’re the ones as wide across the shoulders as they are tall (them, and the crazy US Navy SEALs who train going up and down rope something approaching all day, every day, on the off chance we need to board a ship the really really hard way one of these days). She may not have that level of endurance or raw strength, but it was amazing what she did on a relatively normal body type.
Not visible in Germany:-(.
Cirque du Soliel, yes; aerialism, absolutely; but her performance also reminded me of a touring troupe of Chinese gymn-athletes I saw a couple decades ago, back when having Chinese performers come to the US was still a novelty. Among the mind-boggling things they did climb slender bamboo rods and then, mid-way up the rods (about 30 feet above the stage), fully extend and hold themselves motionless and absolutely perpendicular to the rods (sideways), hanging on by their hands. She actually topped that, since the Chinese athletes stayed motionless, and didn’t do a staircase-walk like that.
Utterly amazing.
I sure hope pole dancing pays well; she deserves to make money hand over fist.
(And yes, the contrast to how non-graceful she was when not on the pole was astonishing. Wonder why the difference?)
Shiny!
I’ll be in my bunk.
The only criticism I could offer is that it’s damned hard to look sexy while shimmying your way up a metal pole. (The rest of the time…oh yeah.)
In terms of sheer talent…Olympic-class, no dissent here.
Pole-dancing type acrobatics require hella upper-body strength – not just biceps, the whole framework. I could never do it, even when I was in ridiculously fine shape and was, um, not middle-aged and stuff.
meh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFBHcjZQ82U
5 basketball juggling with her feet always impressed me more.
Still, between the circus and pole dancing, you have to wonder how many gymnastics champs end up in one or the other profession.
Damn. Just … *damn*.
Listening to the audience, my guess is that it consisted mostly of fellow pole-dancers, who knew far better than most of us how impressive that performance was.
P.S. to N.K.: Thanks for the link to the man pole-dancing. You saved me a trip to the Google.
Someone else mentioned Cirque du Soleil: Here’s a sorta pole dancing routine of theirs from the early 90′s — YouTube. The good parts (to me, at least) are 2:29, 2:56 and 4:06. You can skip the first 24 seconds of the video and not miss anything.
As one of the female persons, I used to sort of look down my nose on pole dancing, without ever really having seen any (for which I whole heartedly apologize) – I had no idea of the strength and flexibility required! It’s been a good reminder to me that folks have all kinds of surprising talents I shouldn’t assume aren’t there!
That’s impressive, but I’m still going to encourage my daughter to stay off a pole.
Too thin, she needs a samich.
tombrrngr:
Anyone who can do that self-evidently has excellent nutritional habits.
It may be that *you* — on some level, for some reason — “need” her to have a samich. But that’s an entirely separate (and irrelevant) thing.
Not bad. But can she shred on guitar while wearing a pirate hat with LED lights?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btc_KPQRfQ8
@Bearpaw:
Yeah…still too thin. And I have multiple samiches.
Honestly, stunningly impressive. Now imagine what she could do in a GREEN body.
Wow! John, at first glance from a distance, I thought it was your wife!
So, does your editor know you spend your day searching the Internet for pole dancing videos? Would they use that against you the next time you miss a deadline?
Jenyne Butterfly is one of my fave pole dancing performers. Her background IS gymnastics, and she’s also worked as an aerialist with Cirque du Soleil in Vegas. I always point to her when people dismiss pole dancing as a legitimate form of athleticism. :)
ANd here’s a two-person “vertical tango” done on a pole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iht7UBZR7pU
I’m speachless…
And she does it again at 4:05! Amazing!
of course one has to wonder if the women weighed 200 pounds if there would be as much excitement….. me thinks not
World Champion Pole Dancer Felix Cane is in Cirque du Soliel’s new Michael Jackson show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTbPUCDKg3I
At 3:25, I was struck blind.
(that may have been my wife who blinded me, though, since she was watching it over my shoulder)
Oh. My. God. Why is this woman not a many-times Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics?
Two things:
Thing the first, I usually watch these for the fail factor. Mainly because I am a terrible person.
Now, thing the second. Does your WIFE share your sentiments on this video?
Love the Felix Cane video! Demonstrates some of the physics behind the pole.
And, um, Glen? Plenty of women aren’t the least bit threatened by their partners watching that kind of display of female athleticism. :)
it is a partial evolution of Chinese pole, pretty much all of the same solo tricks (done very well mind you, she is at professional circus performer level on the skill side). The evolution being that you are spinning while doing it, which makes some of the tricks harder and some of them easier as well as allowing a few tricks you cannot do static. As far as a routine however…. eh. It has a lot of potential but she is still really in her head in the beginning, she isn’t feeling the dancing and build up to getting in the air, it more feels she is counting her steps.
I am being a total armchair critic. I can’t do what she is doing that is for sure, let alone deal with the pain to get there (training your body to move, bend, and be strong in those ways is torture you put yourself through on purpose, takes a strong mind). SO! Big effing kudos to her! Hopefully she starts feeling it a bit more as an act the more she performs it.
Also, if you are enjoying the circus videos this is a dude I went to Circus School with years ago, he has pushed himself pretty damn far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGsH6XocSOA
I will chime in to agree that her pole work is outstanding.
I’m also glad to not be the only one to note that her dancing off the pole was less than stellar. And the fact that I even notice that means I have officially watched to much SYTYCD
Not even in my dreams do I ever move like these folk do.
3:20 was good, John, but 3:45 is what really rattled my cage. She still has that other foot on the pole!
I’ll chime in and simply echo what everyone else has said, which is that her athletic display is damn impressive. I will add that I was listening to that very Florence + The Machine song (“The Dog Days Are Over”) when the video started, and I thought I had some weird reverb thing going until I remembered to turn off iTunes. Great music for a great display of talent!
tombrrngr: “Too thin, she needs a samich.” and “Yeah…still too thin. And I have multiple samiches.”
Unless you are absolutely unable to understand that an athlete like this woman must be well fed and well rested in order to practice for the hours required to develop that technique and the required supporting musculature, it appears that you are making the kind of dismissive, sexist comment that our host assumed we would be able to avoid.
This is not the place to judge this woman on whether her incredibly honed body meets your aesthetic preferences. Cut it out.
Once you get in your 50′s, you can do something easy like yoga, like Ana Forrest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTcLhOlIk5I
@eh – If a woman weighed 200 pounds, she COULDN’T DO THAT. Promise. I know, I weigh 200 pounds. I’m pretty fit, I’ve been a bellydancer for 8 years and that’s a bit of work – lost 100 pounds in the course of 2 years learning the art! – and there’s still no way in hell I could support my weight with my hands and wrists the way Jenyne Butterfly does. If I tried to train for that, doubtless hours upon hours a day, I would no longer weigh 200 pounds. That kind of athleticism burns mad calories.
I am nothing less than amazed half to death by her. She has so much strength and grace! She’d be a great bellydancer.
I had no idea this was even possible. Amazing. I was reminded of Spider Robinson’s novella “Stardance.” Imagine a routine like this in orbit in free fall.
Non-Newtonian.