Playful Polerinas

When we think of pole dancing, we often picture the sexy, the sultry, the spicy of it all. With Polerina, we can showcase an alternative style of pole dancing that marries many kinds of dance styles, pole, and group work all together. Melissa, one of Zeal’s past pole teachers, said this about her favorite class. “Polerina is our [Zeal] choreography class that is based in a ballet and lyrical style foundation, vs poleography which is more like your heels and club style dance. This is a non-heels dance class where we do all kinds of things from ballet, to lyrical, to Broadway, to a little bit of hip-hop all on the pole.”

Students in Polerina currently, are working on a Pirate themed routine with swords, cannon throwing, and plank walking all while doing a variety of moves on and off the poles. Choreographing a full routine like this is something many people shy away from, including myself. How intimidating it can be to try to string moves together on your own, especially when you are first learning! What students end up loving so much about Polerina is that our teachers are so collaborative in their teaching. It’s the variety, the ability to change and suggest different moves, and the becoming familiar with the process of creating and performing a routine, for me.

I asked Melissa where she gets her inspiration for routines because they are always so unique from the last. “Picking the songs is a very collaborative process between the students in the class and myself. Usually just from the songs themselves I get inspiration. We’ve done stuff from El Tango to Roxanne, so for that routine, I watched Mulan Rouge a lot, and a lot of Argentine tango routines to get inspiration from that. We’ve done Umbrella by Rihanna so that took some inspiration from Tom Holland lip sync battle dance. I did a lot of ballet and danced the Nutcracker so the last two Christmas’s we have done songs from the Nutcracker suite, so it really just depends on the song. For stuff coming up we’re going to be doing a Star Wars theme in May [of 2023], and then a spy routine to the Pink Panther song.”

Are you feeling nervous about taking a class like this? If so, that is okay! Trying new things and branching out can be frightening and intimidating. But one of the many great things about Polerina, is it's one of those special classes in which every level can participate all together. “Everybody can take Polerina. The motto in our class is that the choreography is like the pirate’s code, it is a guideline, so we can level it up or level it down based on the students dance and/or pole experience. I have students in the Polerina classes from pole 1 all the way to pole 4 and we make it work for everybody.”

There is really no reason to not give it a shot! I always think of Polerina as my weekly reset where I get to loosen up, have some fun, hangout with my fellow polers, and learn an epic routine. How cool is it to tell your friends and family that you’re doing a (insert awesome theme here) themed pole dance? Oh and don’t worry, we dress up in costume once it’s finished.