Well people, it finally happened. After nearly six and a half years as a pole dancer, I attended my first heavy metal choreo workshop, and as you can probably guess from the title above, it was even more awesome than I imagined!
Before pole dance took over my life many moons ago, heavy metal (especially death metal) was my main passion. The nastier, heavier and more fucking disgusting sounding the song was the better and like the true edgelord I was, no band was too heavy for me. However, as you may have noticed, the worlds of pole dancing and heavy metal are not massively intertwined. Basically, apart from the odd glam metal or more commercial heavy band (Slipknot or Metallica for example), there have been limited opportunities to dance to more extreme metal artists so far in my pole journey. So when the awesome Carolina , a fellow pole dancing metalhead, announced she would be running an online Black Metal Pole Choreo workshop where we would be dancing to the mighty Satyricon, who are one of my favourite Black Metal bands and have produced some solid bangers in their time, to say I was absolutely barry buzzing was an understatement. As soon as I found out when the workshop was taking place, I cancelled any plans and signed up pronto.
As workshop Sunday arrived I was raring to go. I strapped on my favourite Hoodlum Fang set for the occasion, dusted off my old Pleasers (training at home, on a much shorter pole and on carpet had resulted in my heels being packed away for the time being) and was ready to dance my arse off to one of my favourite songs. Now, having been a fan of heavy metal for 16 years, I assumed I would be better at flow and choreo than I normally am. I mean, Satyricon are my jam and I had listened to the song we were dancing to (Black Crow on a Tombstone) umpteen times, so surely I was going to smash the routine based on musicality alone right?
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Well, not quite! After not having trained flow or floorwork since January, holy shit my flow game is categorically not what it was and I was rusty as fuck. Also, as much as I adore heavy metal, it is fast as hell. Carolina briefed us that the routine would feel like a cardio workout in heels, and boy was she telling the truth. By the end of the workshop I was red faced and sweating my arse off. Despite Carolina offering effective progressions and regressions on certain moves in the routine, this twat right here decided to attempt the most difficult versions of everything, and had to have a solid lay down on the sofa afterwards like a granny. At the ripe old age of 30.
As mentioned above, the workshop was definitely a challenging workout in itself. There were plenty of speedy transitions, Russian style leg thread throughs and twizzley bits (yes that is a technical term), but in all honesty that is what I am here for. I do not want to pay for a flow and choreo workshop which consists of an hour of learning step arounds, body waves and clock legs. Now, before anyone throws down, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an entire routine consisting of step arounds, body waves and clock legs, in fact most of mine do, but I’ve come to the not so shocking realisation that if I want my choreo game to dramatically improve on the technicality front, I’m going to have to pull my finger out and actually learn some trickier moves. Carolina’s Black Metal Pole workshop was just the right level of complexity in terms of being a decent workout and learning new tricks whilst still being able to record a solid run through to stick on Instagram, in fact, you can check out my attempt at the badass choreo below.
I mentioned earlier how there is a distinct lack of heavy metal in the pole dancing world ( or so I thought) however it would appear that the tide is beginning to turn! The Black Metal Pole workshop was very well attended internationally, with pole dancers from Finland (you know your workshop is pretty metal when people from the home of all things heavy attend!) Belgium and Austria in attendance.
The moral of the story here is clearly a very simple one – just because you love heavy as fuck metal doesn’t mean you can dance like a boss to it… yet. As you all know by now, I am not one to shy away from any pole related challenge. Well, the challenges may take me ages to eventually start, I’ll have the inevitable motivational slump midway through and I may forget about them all together (I’m looking at you Handstand February you colossal prick) but I’ll give them a bloody good go. And a bloody good go is what I shall give my quest to become a badass heavy metal pole dancer. Due to the popularity of Carolina’s classes, she is running a glam metal themed choreo workshop on Sunday 9th May where we will be dancing to the legend that is Alice Cooper. Obviously I have signed up for that, because who doesn’t love a cheeky bit of Alice Cooper?
If you’ve read this post and think dancing to some decent, heavy shit is your thing, Carolina’s heavy metal choreo classes (and all her other classes) are available via Carolina’s Buy me a Coffee , so head on over and get dancing!
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