With pole, there’s a free launch
The “dance package” called to me. And because the Women Who Wine year-end event at the Gateway Community Center featured its namesake libation and warm vibes underscored by the toe-tapping music of Mike Murray and Chris Krager, I submitted quite a few raffle tickets to win it. Why not? I thought. I love dancing!
Which explains how I came to cling to a pole in the well-heated space of Levitation Nation Aerial Studio on Meridian Court some weeks later. The dance package included a “pole party.” With some brave coworkers and a tanguera from my dance crowd, we spent an hour and a half testing our mettle ... on metal.
Instructor Mariah Gladstone, fresh from a morning skiing Whitefish Mountain Resort, plunged into the warmup: curtsy lunges, figure eights with our hips, arm and wrist circles, and bow pose. Ten minutes in, sweat brimmed on our skin despite our recommended apparel of close-fitting top and “short shorts” (try finding those in your closet this time of year).
Then we got serious, starting with full pole turns, pirouettes and the fireman’s spin, complete with embellishments such as the “flirty fireman.”
We progressed to other moves such as the log roll, fan kicks and a back hook, where you fling yourself around and let your back leg catch hold of the pole. Gravity never has a bad day. I thudded to the floor on my knees, and Gladstone saw the need to teach us pretty ways to land and get up.
“They’re not bruises,” she said, referring to what we might see show up later. “They’re ‘pole kisses.’ Your skin toughens up over time.”
Gladstone, a Kalispell native of Blackfeet and Cherokee descent who earned two degrees back East, got hooked on pole in New York City via a Groupon deal in 2013, and she was off and spinning. Working for the railroad, she’d take classes wherever she stopped when crisscrossing the country, and then started teaching at Levitation Nation five years ago.
On moving back to Montana last fall I went to a Levitation Nation student showcase at the Kalispell Eagles. For hours I watched performers of all ages, abilities and shapes shimmy up silks, spin in and around hoops, and climb, twirl and hang around a pole, all to their favorite music. They appeared fit as Cirque du Soleil artists and held themselves in air as if weightless.
“As adults we don’t take our feet off the ground very often,” Gladstone said, leading us into cool-down stretches. It would be four days before I could don my coat without groaning.
Levitation Nation owner Mindy Cochran arrived as we students giggled over the moves we’d tried to master and pulled on our layers. She had come to lead a black light party for seven and wore bright makeup and a colorful costume for the occasion. On April 16 she hosts a pole-only showcase of local talent in the studio, and I’ll be there! Watching.
Audience development director Margaret E. Davis can be reached at 406-758-4436 or mdavis@dailyinterlake.com