I’ve been teaching a pole move called Suicide Spin (watch it here!) which is exactly as chill as it sounds. It’s a move that takes about 50% technique, and 50% willingness to release the fear of death. You hook the inside of your knee really tightly to the pole, clamp that leg into place with extra arm…
🌞POLESTICE🌞
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 I’m an artist in residence on University of Exeter’s Queer Natures research project, where I’m developing ideas for pole stuff that plays with the politics of ugliness, desirability and bugs (more on that soon 🕷️) A big part of our research is…
Comedy for climate action
The art of Having A Bad Time I’ve 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. I’m so excited to be an Associate Artist on the QUEER NATURES research programme! My project is called UNSEXY BEASTS and I’ll be experimenting with different pole dancing ugly animals to ask questions like: • Why do certain bodies get labelled “desirable” or “undesirable?” • 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, it’s 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 🌈 I’m 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. I’ve…
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…