Some thoughts on milestones. My dear friend and pole icon Arlene Caffrey wrote a great blog about hitting her 19th poleversary, and I realised this year will be exactly a decade since I started dancing on a stick. In November 2015 I touched a pole for the very first time when I auditioned for Metropolis…
The Mirror
my pole is a material girl mirror from Milford Haven, looking across the port This year Iām an artist in residence on University of ExeterāsĀ Queer NaturesĀ research project, where Iām developing ideas for pole stuff that plays with the politics of ugliness, desirability and bugs (more on that soonĀ š·ļø) A big part of our research is…
Comedy for climate action
The art of Having A Bad Time Iāve been teaching comedy writing workshops for Whitman College in the US, specifically on using stand-up techniques to make art about the climate emergency. I was really stunned by not just the originality of what people created, but by the refusal to accept a defeatist or dumbed down…
QUEER NATURES Artist Residency
Plus: why Chappell Roan matters more than you think. Iām so excited to be an Associate Artist on the QUEER NATURES research programme! My project is called UNSEXY BEASTS and Iāll be experimenting with different pole dancing ugly animals to ask questions like: ⢠Why do certain bodies get labelled ādesirableā or āundesirable?ā ⢠What does that…
Pole for mental rewiring
I went to the Fringe this year with one question: what feels fun? When things you love doing get mixed with financial stress and career pressure, itās easy for that to sink to the bottom of the priority list. I needed to reconnect with just the fun part. And it worked! I had a great…
The Cosmic Joke
The universe is gay and it’s trolling me š Iām copywriting for a gay sex shop, and honestly I love it. I mostly sit in the back office writing product descriptions for the website, but every now and we topple into the shop together in a flurry of activity: a customer needs urgent advice on…
SEXY DREAD
The meta-experiment of Pole Yourself Together! People underestimate how much of being a live artist is admin. I only became a pole comic to follow my true passion, which is: emailing people about the ceiling. My show Pole Yourself Together! is a banishing spell for dread, and an underlying part of that dread is sexual harassment. Iāve…
The late capitalist dread of pole dancing to Lana Del Rey
In defence of anguish bangers. Yearning! Regret! Using your SAD lamp as a ringlight for nudes! Yearning from different angles! Yearning with better filters! Making sly references to an ex on Instagram before the main evening Yearn! I love the Lanaverse. It is a place where you can royally not have your shit together and…
4 things from stand-up I’m applying to pole dancing
Pole dancing and stand-up have a lot in common: thereās a high risk of onstage death, neither career will impress your parents, and both have a love-hate relationship with hen parties.Ā I feel very lucky that I was a dead-behind-the-eyes stand-up comic before I went anywhere near a pole for the resilience, self-awareness and thick…