i'm officially a Pole Master! (believe me, i already know all the dirty puns you can make with that title.)

so! the pole recital! as most of you know i've been taking pole for a while now. the way it works in our studio is that you progress through each of 6 subsequently more difficult levels of pole - eg, harder spins, crazier inverts and other tricks requiring more upper body strength, etc. - until at the end of level 6, you choreograph your own routine to a song of your choosing, and perform it. by yourself. in front of people.

did i also mention how with a lot of these complicated tricks, you're holding on to the pole with areas like your thighs, so you can't wear clothing that, say, covers your thighs? and instead you need to wear weeeee little shorts, in order to expose your tender thigh skin for better grippage? in front of people?

you can see where this starts leading to hyperventilation.

so our recital was this weekend, and... well. it was VERY STRESSFUL, let me tell you. saturday was a full day of Pole Recital Preparations, starting at 12:30 when several of us met to get our hairs did for the big day. my sole request to the hair stylist was "big." my hair is pretty much the antithesis of big (more "flat," "stringy," and "lifeless") so i figured if she made it huge and voluminous, it would be large-ish and with some hints of body by show time. she took me at my word, and i left the salon with about 8 lbs of hairspray in my hair and the biggest hair anyone has ever accomplished on me in my LIFE.

by showtime, i had my completely lifeless, flat, stringy hair back. le sigh.

but! the actual recital part! it was nerve-wracking and exciting and i think we had about 50 people crammed into our minuscule studio watching us. and it went pretty well, for the most part. except for the part where i fell on my head aaahahahahahahaaaaOMFG I FELL. ON MY HEAD. SERIOUSLY.

remember this handy visual display?

so, i'm actually pretty good at that part. doing the handstand is totally a mental hurdle to overcome, not really physically hard to do at all. it's the whole convincing yourself to throw your legs over your head toward a 2" wide target that's the hard part. but once i got that down, i've been handstanding to the pole like a fool. the only times i've ever not hit the handstand is when i've been too tentative and haven't kicked my legs up high enough, and then you just come right back down to where you started.

except! when doing this for FIFTY FRACKING PEOPLE, i straight up MISSED THE POLE. MISSED IT. and landed sort of crumpled in a little upside-down heap next to the pole.

i cannot even begin to explain how confused i was in that minute. i mean, i was adrenalined up to the point of heart attack to begin with, and coupled with the fact that it had NEVER HAPPENED before, i literally could not figure out what had happened. i knew where i was *supposed* to be, and instead i was somehow.. on the floor? what direction was i facing? what had just happened? WHAT SHOULD I DO NOW? holy crap, did i just FALL OFF THE POLE DURING MY PERFORMANCE??!?!?!!

i heard someone from my class yell "do it again!" and unable to think of anything else suitable on my own, i got up and threw my legs right back up, hit the handstand, and i think more due to shock than anything else, hit the MUCH HARDER move from there, which was to clamp on with my legs and hold, handsfree.

i realize this is the world's poorest quality photo, but it's basically a screencap from a grainy video that the wonderful marie was sweet enough to take for me during the performance. however, what's going on here is that from the handstand, i hold on with my feet, and let go of my hands. dudes. this part is HARD. (the handstand! it is not supposed to be hard. AUGH.)

ANYWAY. aside from that one teeeensy little hiccup where i FELL ON MY HEAD HAHAHAHAOMGKILLMENOW, it went fine. people still seemed to enjoy the routine, and despite my utter mortification, seemed somehow IMPRESSED with the fall, like it proved what i was doing was hard enough to, say, FALL ON ONE'S HEAD by accident.

(are all the caps adequately conveying my horror at this? i think probably. i'll try to lay off now.)

anyway. if i just apply a nice little mental block to that portion of the evening and pretend it didn't happen, i'm actually pretty pleased with how everything else went. i DID hit all the actual hard moves, i only blanked on my routine once mid-performance, and managed to cover it well enough that i don't think anyone noticed. plus, it was honestly fun to get to show off for my friends.

how about a few more grainy, hard to make out screencaps so i can show off to you guys a bit too? it's hard to tell, but here i'm about 4 feet up the pole, with both legs held out in a wide V to either side. (you can see the reflection of my right leg in the mirror.) one of my favorite parts of the routine was right after doing this: with my legs still out in that V position, i dropped straight down the height of the entire pole, landing sitting on the floor with my legs out to either side :-)

ok, turns out it's hard to get screencaps of any of the spins, since.. you know.. i was moving all fast and spinny and stuff, but this is in the middle of a spin appropriately named the "flying body:"

so overall: this has been a super, super fun thing to do over the past year. despite the falling on my head bit (HAHAHAHAAAAA OMG STILL MORTIFIED) i'm really proud of myself for doing this, and i can't believe the amount of strength i've built up - doing this stuff is HARD, yo, and you need some serious upper body power to get through a 4:30 min routine of high-aerobic strength moves. upper body strength that i most certainly did not have going into this endeavor, incidentally.

for all you locals - they're opening up a new studio in falls church in march. you should look into taking a class :-)