AE RIAL PE RF OR MA NC E AR TI ST LIND SAY GREE N By Jeff Kronenfeld Photo: Alloy Images 34 <strong>JAVA</strong> MAGAZINE
Photo: Glen Goldblat Lindsay Green, the owner and founder of Prowess Pole Fitness and Aerial Intensity, grew up in the small town of Goodrich, Michigan, a stone’s throw from Flint, a city famous for its toxic waters and precipitous economic decline. Living in the post-industrial landscape of America’s rotted-out rustbelt, Green dreamed of sunnier climes and swaying palm trees. During Christmastime, when it was below freezing at home, a young Green would visit her mother’s family in Arizona. She loved it. When inevitably it was time to return to Michigan, she would protest and ask why they had to leave. Though it took a few years to come to fruition, it was then that she decided: Someday she would move to the desert for good. Green was 19 and living in Flint when a friend showed her some pole-dancing moves. It proved fateful. “She was this amazing, bendy and crazystrong creature,” Green recalled. “I basically begged her to teach me.” Though just 5’4”, Green’s energy and drive, in addition to her chiseled musculature, lend her a towering air. As we chatted amid gleaming poles and moving bodies on a Saturday at her Tempe studio, I felt incredulous when she claimed that, growing up, she was the least athletic person one could imagine. Photo: Glen Goldblat Though now Green can easily do the splits upside down while spinning on a pole in front of a rapt crowd, this wasn’t always the case. “I actually failed gym in high school,” Green admits with a sheepish grin. “That’s how un-athletic I was. I couldn’t run a mile.” Green never did dance or gymnastics growing up. Aside from T-ball, she didn’t participate in organized sports. However, while watching her friend’s dancing contortions that day, something clicked, and she made a promise to herself: She would learn and master the art of pole dancing. “I never considered myself to be strong, but just the idea that I could get myself upside down was really exciting. It was something fun I could do at my house,” Green said. “Going to the gym is not always an enjoyable exercise, especially for women. You’re constantly being looked at. Now, I don’t care. Part of pole dancing is building self-confidence.” Some see in pole dancing echoes of the tradition of the Maypole, which was used during spring rituals in Europe’s pre-Christian past. Though customs vary, the festivals often saw troops of women dancing around the pole, while sometimes winding ribbons in complex patterns. In India, a sport called mallakhamba, which translates roughly into pole wrestling, has been practiced since at least the 12th century. In mallakhamba, athletes execute aerial yoga postures and wrestling grips on a wooden pole, often involving death-defying displays of strength, flexibility and control. In China, pole dancing has traditionally involved the use of two vertical poles that stand between 10 and 30 feet tall. With the poles covered in rubber and the performers wearing costumes over most of their bodies, the motions were less fluid. Several modern pole-dancing tricks can trace their lineage to the Chinese tradition. In Femininity, Feminism and Recreational Pole Dancing, author Kerry Griffiths traces the development of the sport’s association with burlesque and striptease to the “hoochie coochie” dancers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. These dances often occurred at circuses or traveling fairs, where performers may have gradually integrated the tent support poles into the act. The pole became a mainstay of gentlemen’s clubs in North America starting in the ’60s. In the ’90s and ’00s, the pole fitness movement began and grew into a popular group activity like yoga or Pilates. <strong>JAVA</strong> 35 MAGAZINE
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