Every few years - as new baby pole dancers join our ranks - the question of where pole dancing comes from inevitably gets brought up for debate all over again. The last time I wrote about this was in 2014 and the only real information you could find at the time was hazy and vague, usually referencing Chinese pole or Mallakhamb as leading to the pole we know today; with little to no proof to back it up. So what do we know now, 7 years later?
Historic Pole
Modern Pole Dancing
Three things we know for sure:
We would not have pole without strippers
We would not have pole without incredible dancers from all over the world
There is NO proof of a direct line of influence from either Chinese pole or Mallakhamb to modern day pole dancing
Please note that credible first hand resources are almost non-existent due to the taboo nature of this topic. I've compiled this piece from industry information, word of mouth, internet research and two books (Behind the Burly Q and Striptease: The Untold History of the Girly Show).
The History of Sex Work
Sex work is often referred to as the oldest profession for a very good reason. Full service sex work, stripping and porn have likely existed since the beginning of humanity, in some form or another, and we have references to various acts from all over the world and from all periods of history. We're going to skip forward to the 1800s for ease.
Prior to burlesque developing in America, many European countries already had fully nude shows. Quite often the laws of the time meant that performers had to stand entirely still in order to avoid prosecution. There is one record of a French dancer who had a routine which included stripping in around 1890 but, according to Behind the Burly Q, it was America that really developed and perfected the art of burlesque. It has been claimed that, with the rise of the striptease in America, many of these nude European dancers and performers were in fact clamouring to put their clothes back on, so they could take them right back off again. The striptease became an art form in its own right.
It's widely agreed that burlesque, and later modern stripping, developed in part as a result of the Worlds Fair and the circus. The Worlds Fairs were huge exhibition type events, designed initially to boost trade and technology but later became a kind of cultural exchange. The very first event of this kind was held in 1844 in Paris and later events happened all over the world, including America. These exhibitions bought dancers from all over the world to the West, sometimes for the first time. As a result Westerners were exposed to new dance forms such as belly dance, and began to incorporate some of these movements in to their own acts. This filtered in to burlesque, cabaret and circus shows. Burlesque shows also took to the road either by themselves or as part of the circus itself. As both belong to the same industry, that of entertaining, it is likely that the two worlds would have collided often and inspired each other. As they do to this day! So we know that the circus was involved to some degree with this development but, as we will later see, it is unlikely that Chinese pole in particular had a huge influence.
The circus of the mid 1800s would have looked very different to the circus we know today and it wasn't until the 1900s that shows became more kid friendly. The earlier shows were very much aimed at an adult audience, alcohol flowed in abundance and it was not unusual for fights to break out. Performers wore very little and there was a sexual undertone to much of the show. You would have also seen semi-nude performers, which were presented under the guise of "admiring the human form" for educational purposes. You can read a little more about this here.
Burlesque shows many hundreds of years ago would have looked very different to what we would recognise today. The term burlesque originally referred to a musical comedy show, one that primarily made fun of other plays or literature of the time. Something akin to the pantos we have today. It was only later that it became attached to the variety show in America, and in fact stripping was not present at all to begin with. There have been many dancers credited with inventing modern stripping but the story is often the same: a dancer has a costume malfunction on stage one night and the audience goes absolutely wild, so, they keep having these costume "malfunctions" every night from then on until it starts to catch on. They became such a popular feature that the girls took over the show and the comedy acts became the filler, before falling away entirely to become strip clubs as we know them today. These acts became particularly popular during the Great Depression, because burlesque shows were cheap and catered to the working classes, who were desperate for a bit of escapism.
By the 1960s the golden age of burlesque was almost entirely over. On one side the second wave of feminism tended towards being anti-pornography and considered SW exploitation. On the other adult film theatres and printed pornography was becoming ever more accessible. Burlesque started to be seen as old fashioned, boring or actively hated. The performers who continued moved their acts from big theatre stages to alternative night clubs, continuing the evolution.
Whilst I cannot say with absolute certainty that there weren't performers who saw Chinese pole at the Worlds Fair or at the circus, and were inspired to dance on the tent poles or build their own, the fact is that burlesque gave way to stripping and I can find no concrete proof that poles were used prior to the 70s. There are no first hand accounts of this that I can find. It's a game of telephone. If they were used earlier in the circus tents of the 1800s then it would be nearly 100 years before they were seen again regularly in the clubs. Hardly an obvious and direct link, but maybe part of the evolution and journey.
We can see in early videos of stripping from the 1980s that pole dancing looks nothing like Chinese pole. This was a later influence and many of the tricks we use today can be directly attributed to specific strippers. This is why many of them have female names: they are named after the women who invented them. Circus tricks have a variety of names but very few, if any, come to mind that are named in this way.
It makes more sense to me that if the original pole dancers were inspired by Chinese pole at the circus that todays pole would have grown out of that environment, the same as aerial hoop, silks and trapeze have, and would solely be associated with that world and performance art.
Although more and more the circus and pole communities are overlapping... very few pole studios offered aerial skills in the beginning. In fact until more recent years it was very hard to learn circus skills outside of peer learning and small pockets of communities. There is a reason people had to run away to join the circus and they learnt on the job! It was an industry primarily about performance. Not teaching others.
So how did the pole become a feature in strip clubs?
The only thing I can say concretely in regards to pole as an apparatus is that by the 80s, and definitely by the 90s, they were in most clubs; how and when seems to be up for debate. It's entirely possible that it developed simultaneously in different ways at different times in different places. It's natural to want to dance with a prop, or to hold on to something, and it would seem likely that these venues had dance cages before they had poles.
Even today you can find podium dancers still using cages and railings to do tricks and to hold as they dance. It has also been said that certain clubs in the 70s specifically chose the pole as a nod to the circus and as a way of introducing a new element to the stripping but if this is true there's no first hand evidence. This is either a myth or has been passed down through word of mouth.
The First Pole Studios
What we know with absolute certainty is that almost all of the first studio owners were strippers and we know this because it didn't happen that long ago in the grand scheme of things. These dancers are still around and can tell their stories.
In 1994 Fawnia Mondey, nee Dietrich, opened what is usually credited as being the first pole dancing studio outside of the clubs and during the late 90s, and in to the 00s, more and more dancers followed suit. It's likely that they knew from their long hours dancing, and from inventing more and more interesting tricks to keep their audiences entertained, that pole is incredible exercise and great fun.
These pioneering strippers saw a business opportunity and ran with it. Even when I started pole around 9 years ago, most pole dance instructors were either ex-strippers/strippers or taught by one, even if it wasn't always public knowledge.
By 2010 most studios were using "pole as sport - nothing to do with stripping!" as their advertising basis to lure students in. Thankfully many dancers since then have worked hard to reclaim and celebrate sexy pole and sex work in general but sadly there is still a lot of whorephobia and anti-SWer sentiment in our industry which is often fuelled by misinformation about our history.
Today and onwards...
The main question I'm left with, again, after all this research, is why we are still having to debate this? The pioneers of our sport, strippers, are still here to tell their stories. We know that without them we would not have this glorious art form, and for that we should give thanks, rather than trying to diminish their role in the creation of our beloved activity. Regardless of why you choose to pole it could not have happened without them, and I feel it's important that all instructors educate their students on pole history and that we show respect as an industry.
Pole has developed so much over the last decade that it will be interesting to see where we end up in another 10 years, but let's hope students around the world have more respect for the creators of our sport.
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