Scaling new heights

Dancer Meng Yifan from the China Pole Dance Team practices for the upcoming pole dance performance to be held at Tianjin Haihe Theater on Sept 14 and 15. Zou Hong / China Daily

Before getting involved in pole dancing, Yuan, who came from Henan province, was a lawyer making a good living. However, he was bored with his job and became interested in pole dancing after watching shows abroad and online.

"It's much more like acrobatics with a fun and elegant style, which is not like what I thought. It did get me thinking," says Yuan.

He started looking for skillful pole dancers in China and four people joined him. To expand the influence and call for new pole dancers in China, Yuan sold his car and house, spending more than 1 million yuan ($161,300) to organize the first China Pole Dance Championship in 2011.

Only 10 people competed in the first China Pole Dance Championship and in its second year, Yuan had to change to a smaller venue because the contest was considered "dirty".

However, what made Yuan happy was that the contest enabled him to find skilled dancers, who later became members of the China Pole Dance Team.

Meng Yifan, a 29-year-old Tianjin native and leader of the China Pole Dance Team, who represented China at the world championship in Switzerland for the first time in November 2012, was the first person to join Yuan.

In the show, she dances the winter and spring sections, which represent what the pole dancers have experienced in real life - moving from darkness to hope.

Having studied Chinese folk dancing since childhood and later trained in modern dance, Meng saw pole dancing for the first time online in early 2007. Like many people, she thought of pole dancing as being synonymous with strip clubs, however she found she was wrong.

"It was a performance from a Taiwan girl. I was amazed by her skill. It's beautiful, just like ballet," says Meng, who graduated from the choreography department at Tianjin's Nankai University. She bought a pole online and taught herself how to dance on it at home.

"I had been dancing on the floor for more than 20 years. The anti-gravity transition really excited me as a choreographer," she says. "I got addicted to it at once because it has everything I enjoy; strength, grace and flexibility."

Her parents, however, were worried when they found their daughter swirling around the pole in her room. When she told her relatives she was working as a pole dance teacher, they frowned and went silent. "I didn't care because there is nothing to be shameful about," she says.

The situation became better when Meng became the first Chinese contestant to be invited to the world championship. She now dances in a theater. "Now my family and friends are wowed by my strength and skillful moves on the pole," she says.

She also opened a studio in Tianjin to teach pole dancing. Most of her students are office ladies, who want to shape their muscles and lose weight. "Only two girls came to my first class. They didn't tell their friends that they were learning pole dancing because it's considered bad," says Meng. Now she teaches hundreds of students, female and male, and she is considering opening a new studio in Beijing.

To correct misconceptions about pole dancing, Yuan and Meng have written a book together. Titled China Pole Sport Origin, they claim pole dancing can be traced back to the Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) dynasties, when pole dancing was a tournament or sport like gymnastics.

They also try to promote pole dancing as many ways as possible. Team members Song Yao and Liu Yan have appeared in 2012's China's Got Talent,where they performed on a pole. Yan Shaoxuan, a male performer in the team, also participated in The Dance and the Voice.

"I didn't want to dance for others in clubs. I want to dance for myself," says 25-year-old Yan from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. He won first prize in the first China Pole Dance Championship by practicing Shaolin kung fu on the pole.

"It's very frustrating to face discrimination, but the more we dance on the pole, the more we change people's minds," he says.

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