Poling For Charity: The Flying Vs Dance to Help End Violence Against Women

So I don’t know how you spent your Saturday night, but I’m going to tell you how I spent mine, because it was positively spectacular.  First, I went to see The Vagina Monologues.  I know, it came out in the 90’s and where have I BEEN?  But for those of you who have never seen it, it’s worth going. The Vagina Monologues is made up of a varying number of monologues read by a varying number of women.  Every monologue somehow relates to the vagina, be it through sex, love, rape, menstruation, mutilation, masturbation, birth, orgasm, the variety of names for the vagina, or simply as a physical aspect of the body. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality (courtesy of Wikipedia).  The play does a nice job of making you feel good about your vagina, if you have one.  I do, however wish it included the more positive aspects of heterosexual relationships.   While I understand that one of the goals of the play is to raise awareness about violence against women, there were parts of the play that felt like flat-out man bashing, which I don’t particularly agree with. 

The Vagina Monologues is the cornerstone of the V-Day movement, whose participants stage benefit performances of the show and/or host other related events in their communities. Such events take place worldwide each year between February 1 and April 30. The performances generally benefit rape crisis centers and similar resource centers for women.  This year in Santa Monica, V-Day benefitted Peace Over Violence, an LA based charity that helps women who have been physically and sexually assaulted.  A portion of the proceeds also went to women and girls in Haiti who are launching a campaign to end violence in their country with the help of sponsors and activists.

Following the play, there was a lovely after party with food, drinks and…pole dancing! A group of women known as The Flying Vs performed on two freestanding poles smack dab in the middle of the after party.  The Flying Vs are made up of four women: Tracy Mueller, Christina Grance, Rie Katagiri and Katy Kamen.  All four women have an S Factor background, and two of the four teach pole dancing at S Factor.  Rie teaches at Movement Studio LA and Katy offers private lessons in Malibu.  Their first performance was a celebration of the transition from girl to woman.  The dancers started off in tutus and tank tops and as the song progressed, they shed their layers of girlish clothing to reveal womanly curves and lingerie.  The second performance was an erotic dance to Moulin Rouge’s “Roxanne”.  The message was: I’m unapologetically sexy.  Now watch me and worship.  In both performances, the dancers moved slowly, deliberately and extremely sensually.   While there were some beautiful pole tricks, the focus was just as much on the floor as it was on the pole.  The dancers were in almost constant eye contact with one another, feeding off one another’s energy, which heightened the eroticism of the performance. 

I think the presence of pole dancing, especially an incredibly sensual form of pole dancing at this particular charity event, is significant for three reasons.  First, it shows the spirit of the pole dance community in a positive light.  It is possible to be sensual and celebrate the beauty of the female body without denigrating or objectifying it.  Second, it reinforces the idea that ending violence against women (which is the driving force behind all the V Day celebrations) does not mean erasing or hiding or restricting their sexuality.  On the contrary.   The end of violence against women, in a certain way, means that women can fully own and express their sexuality and its power without fear of attack, judgment or any other negative repercussions.  And this is precisely what happened on Saturday night.  Finally, pole dancing for a charitable cause shows that women can choose to dance, they can dance for reasons that are positive, and that the pole dance community is devoted to helping those in need.  In other words, we have heart.  And if you have any doubt about that, then check out Anjel Dust’s latest pole fundraiser for Japan on April 16^th and Emilee Wilson’s fundraiser, also for Japan, at The Good Hurt on April 4^th.  We love to dance, but we love it even more if it’s for a good cause!

At the end of their last performance, The Flying V’s walked into their audience, who had formed a circle around them, and pulled women out onto the floor to dance with them.  It was a symbolic move, one that communicated that the dance was for all women.  I cannot begin to express to you the joy of looking around at a sea of women, all moving sensually on the floor, on the poles, all celebrating their bodies and their sexuality, all blissfully uninhibited and feeling safe and celebrated.  It was…awesome.  And it made me want to be a Flying V!

For more information on The Flying V’s go to: www.theflyingvs.com

For more information on V Day go to: www.vday.org

To get on board with Peace Over Violence check out: www.peaceoverviolence.org

...And I'm Anchored Through My Vagina

I was recently hanging out with my friend Meghan B, a fellow pole dancer and a woman who is NOT afraid to be in her body.  We were talking about pole dancing, and women who pole dance and sharing some frustration about things that we sometimes felt were missing from our dancing, and sometimes from other women’s dancing as well.  Meghan was struggling to express exactly what she meant and so finally she just said, “It’s just like there is not enough of THIS!”, making a large downward V-motion  along her vagina with her hands, repeatedly.  I’m going to insert a picture here, so you can REALLY see what I mean.

“This?” I said, repeating the motion with my own hands, and trying to find words for it.  

“Yeah, this!”  She said, repeating the motion.

“You mean…Anchoring Through Your Vagina?” I asked.

“YES!” she said.  We exploded into laughter, but I knew exactly what she meant.  She was talking about this feeling that sometimes, despite all the hip circling and head tossing, there could be a real lack of sexual force and presence in the way we move.  That our seat, our pelvic floor, was somehow not connected to the earth, that somehow we weren’t really living in that sexual space between our legs, just making shallow attempts at it.  It’s an awful feeling.  Empty and powerless.

A few days later I was out with some of my other lovely friends (who have all either pole danced or are currently pole dancing, or are teaching pole dancing) for a mani/pedi/martini evening.  As we were letting our nails dry, catching up on each other's lives and flipping through the gossip magazines, Heather announced that Katie Holmes was set to play Jackie O. in some made-for-TV movie.  “Whaaaaat?”   Everyone was a bit surprised.  I pointed out that it was as weird as Jennifer Love-Hewitt  being cast to play Audrey Hepburn.  It just didn’t feel right, there wasn’t enough oomph, enough presence, enough weight or depth to these women, you know they just weren’t…and  all of a sudden I found myself making the downward V-motion along my vagina.  Rather emphatically.  My friends looked at me quizzically.  “Uh, no, we don’t know.  What’s…?” And they repeated the motion. 

“Anchored Through Your Vagina.” I explained.  They laughed their heads off.  And of course, they completely got it.

“I love how you said that, like it’s just an everyday thing…and it kind of should be!” said my friend Meghan S. (I have two Meghans in my life, and they are both splendid people).

“Yeah, sort of like ‘What did you do today?’ ‘Oh, I went to get a hamburger, oh and by the way,  I’m 

Anchored Through My Vagina” said my friend Julie.

EXACTLY like that!  For the rest of the evening, we inserted the phrase “Anchored Through My Vagina” whenever possible, along with the hand gestures.  Between that, and smacking our own asses at dinner to describe the way someone danced, we had quite the evening. 

At one point during dinner, my friend Meghan S. pointed out that it might actually be really important to have that sensation of anchoring, of external force coming from the vagina, because it so often spends its time taking things in.  She’s right.  We don’t spend a lot of time pushing out from our vaginas, unless we are giving birth.  Most of us are hardly aware of our pelvic floors in our day-to-day living.  And yet, there is a deep well of knowledge that lives in that part of our bodies.  It can inform us about our sexuality, our desires, our fears and our scars.  When we take the time to explore that part of ourselves in our dance, we begin to make friends with it.   And I think what also begins to happen is that we start to feel a certain weight and presence in our sexuality and in our movements.  The movement no longer come from our arms and legs, it comes from our pelvis, from our seat of power.  And this discovery gets translated into how we move in our everyday lives. 

So the next time you dance, see if you can find that connection to your pelvic floor.  And if you feel disconnected from your movement,  see if you can find a way through it by exploring the space in between your hip bones.  And the next time you are feeling distanced from your  sexuality, ungrounded or even disempowered, ladies,  simply point your hands into that  magical V-Shape (emphatically) and repeat these words: “…And I am Anchored Through My Vagina"!