JAVA.June.2018

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.
JAVA 35
MAGAZINE